Comment 18 for bug 1381136

Part of my concern here is that I realized that Heat has some sharp edges. Do we really want these sharp edges? I have just done some language lawyering, and here is what I have realized.

In the Template Guide --- which is found under Python Developer documentation but acknowledged to also be relevant to users --- the section about resources (http://docs.openstack.org/developer/heat/template_guide/hot_spec.html#resources-section) consistently uses the term "resource ID" for what I have been calling "resource name". I'll take that as a correction of my terminology. The Template Guide also has a definition of the get_resource intrinsic (http://docs.openstack.org/developer/heat/template_guide/hot_spec.html#get-resource), and it consistently uses the term "resource ID" for that function's input and uses the term "reference ID" for that function's output.

Python developers see that a Resource has an "id", and fall into the habit of saying "resource ID" when we mean that field. I am not the only one who has done this; in comment #8 here, Zane followed my lead in this direction.

Of course, Resource.id does not hold what the Template Guide defines to be the resource's ID. It is actually the resource's reference ID in many cases but not all.

It is fast to look up a Resource by it's Resource.id (that being the primary key). For a general given resource reference ID, there is no general way to look up the reference except by enumerating the resources of the stack (presuming the relevant stack is already known) and comparing reference IDs. Are we even guaranteed uniqueness?