A global entity name system (ENS) for data ecosystems

After decades of schema-centric research on data management and integration, the evolution of data on the web and the adoption of resource-based models seem to have shifted the focus towards an entity-centric approach. Our thesis is that the missing element to achieve the full potential of this approach is the development of what we call an Entity Name System (ENS), namely a system which provides a collection of general services for managing the lifecycle of globally unique identifiers in an open and decentralized environment. The claim is that this system can indeed play the coordination role that the DNS played for the document-centric development of the current web.