VIAF has an official permalink format that looks like http://viaf.org/viaf/27092134. The actual URLs used currently, however, look like https://viaf.org/viaf/27092134/ (HTTPS, trailing slash), and VIAF redirects from the former to the latter (for now).

We've decided to continue to store the permalinks in the database, but to convert them for links so as to avoid redirects. This needs to be implemented.