Internet DRAFT - draft-coates-urn-namespace
draft-coates-urn-namespace
Network Working Group A. B. Coates
Internet-Draft No organization
Expires: April 17, 2001 October 17, 2000
URN Namespace for Literate Programming: Anthony B. Coates
draft-coates-urn-namespace-01.txt
Status of this Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that
other groups may also distribute working documents as
Internet-Drafts.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents
at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.
The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at
http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
This Internet-Draft will expire on April 17, 2001.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a URN namespace for use in identifying XML
namespaces for use with applications created by the author, Anthony
B. Coates. In particular, the author develops applications for
literate programming.
1. Introduction
XML namespaces require a URI to identify them. While URLs have
commonly been used for this purpose, the recent controversy over the
use of relative URLs for namespaces has highlighted the deficiency
in using locators (which are generally assumed to name an actual
resource) for disambiguating XML namespaces. This has moved the
author to request a URN namespace with the ID "abc" (the author's
Coates Expires April 17, 2001 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft URN Namespace for A.B.Coates October 2000
initials).
For professional reasons, the author finds himself changing
continent every few years, and hence uses e-mail and Web redirection
services whose domain names are not under his control, and hence are
subject to change without notice. The assignment of a persistent
URN would remove any inherent dependence on URLs outside of the
author's control.
This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.
2. Specification Template
Namespace ID:
"abc" requested.
Registration Information:
Registration Version Number: 2
Registration Date: 2000-10-17
Declared registrant of the namespace:
Anthony B. Coates
abcoates@TheOffice.net
Declaration of structure:
URNs in this namespace must all start with "urn:abc:YYYY:" where
YYYY is the four digit year in which the URN was assigned.
Otherwise, the structure is opaque. The URNs assigned by the
author will have internal structure, but beyond the year of
assignment, the structure is not expected to be manifestly
obvious to an outside observer.
The inclusion of the year of assignment as a compulsory part of
the URN structure is to assure the persistence of the URNs
even if the ownership of the "abc" namespace is passed on to
someone else at some time in the future (perhaps on the
author's death).
URNs assigned in previous years cannot be clobbered by URNs
assigned in the current year so long as the nominated
structure is adhered to.
Relevant ancillary documentation:
None
Identifier uniqueness considerations:
Coates Expires April 17, 2001 [Page 2]
The versioned and distinct nature of the resources themselves
makes duplication unlikely, as does the mandatory inclusion of
the year of assignment in the URNs, but in the interest of
providing concrete assurances, the owner agrees to maintain a
table of assigned URNs and to absolutely avoid duplication by
consulting that table before each new URN is published.
Identifier persistence considerations:
For the most part, the persistence of the URNs in this namespace
is guaranteed by the mandatory inclusion of the year of
assignment in each URN. Otherwise, to the best of the
namespace owner's ability, the usability of URNs will last as
long as the resources they identify are reasonably useful.
Process of identifier assignment:
Assignment is limited to the owner and those authorities that
are specifically designated by the owner.
Process of identifier resolution:
The owner will distribute catalogs (e.g., OASIS Open TR9401
Catalogs) that map the subset of URNs considered useful to
resource identifiers (e.g., URLs).
The owner will authorise resolution services as necessary.
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
URNs are lexically equivalent if they are lexically identical
(case-sensitive comparison).
Conformance with URN Syntax:
No special considerations.
Validation mechanism:
None specified. The owner will publish the table of assigned
URNs online.
Scope:
Global
3. Examples
The following examples are not guaranteed to be real, but indicate
the anticipated format of the author's URNs.
Coates Expires April 17, 2001 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft URN Namespace for A.B.Coates October 2000
urn:abc:2000:litprog:xmLP:beta:2000-09-06:tangle
urn:abc:2001:litprog:xmLP:2.1:2001-09-06:weave
urn:abc:2000:litprog:source:text:plain:Java:1.3
urn:abc:2000:litprog:source:text:xml:XSLT:1.0:2000-08-01
4. Security Considerations
There are no additional security considerations other than those
normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.
References
[1] Walsh, N., "A URN Namespace for Norman Walsh", July 2000.
[2] Knuth, D. E., "Literate Programming", CSLI Lecture Notes 27,
1992.
[3] Goldfarb, C. F., "ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) ISO 8879:1986(E) Information Processing --
Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language
(SGML)", 1986.
[4] W3C, XML WG, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0", February
1998, <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.
[5] W3C, Namespaces WG, "Namespaces in XML", January 1999,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names>.
[6] OASIS, Entity Mgmt. TC, "Entity Management: OASIS Technical
Resolution 9401:1997 (Amendment 2 to TR 9401)", January 1994,
<http://www.oasis-open.org/html/a401.htm>.
[7] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[8] Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, "URI Resolution Services Necessary
for URN Resolution", RFC 2483, January 1999.
Author's Address
Anthony B. Coates
No organization
92 Middlesex St
London E1 7EZ
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 20 7377 6211
EMail: abcoates@TheOffice.net
URI: http://www.theoffice.net/abcoates/
Coates Expires April 17, 2001 [Page 4]
Internet-Draft URN Namespace for A.B.Coates October 2000
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph
are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
English.
The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
"AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Acknowledgement
Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the
Internet Society.
Coates Expires April 17, 2001 [Page 5]
