What Is Canonicalization?

Everybody knows that a pinch of salt can make a bland meal delicious. A little bit of sugar makes bitter coffee palatable. And a splash of cream makes hot chocolate extra rich. But in data science, the term canonicalization has a whole new meaning. Canonicalization transforms a data structure, or a set of data structures, into something familiar and highly efficient. It's one of those complicated things, but it's not! For example, say we have a web page with tons of links. When you click on one, you want to ensure that you're always linking to the same page - even if the URL contains the connection points at different destinations throughout its lifetime. So instead, we convert all these links into simple hashes that can be easily compared. This allows us to sort them alphabetically or store them efficiently in a database for future reference. "In programming, canonicalization selects one representative form of a set of data to be used as the standard form when comparing data. The most common form of canonicalization is alphabetical ordering, but it can also be based on length, data type, or other properties. It is often used for sorting and searching algorithms to give them a stable data set. Canonicalization is not just a concept used in computer science; it is a word used in many fields to select one standard form of a group of data. Although a simple idea, it profoundly impacts computer security. Because of it, some Web servers have a security rule to execute files only under a particular directory, A safe way to canonicalize file paths. Safe in the sense that no file name will be interpreted as an input. It has been a key to digital development for decades, but it has only recently been named. The term canonicalization takes on a whole new meaning.