Network Working Group                                            K. Best
Internet-Draft                                               OASIS, Inc.
Expires: June 18, 2001                                          N. Walsh
                                                  Sun Microsystems, Inc.
                                                       December 18, 2000


                       A URN Namespace for OASIS
                                 oasis
                         draft-best-urn-oasis-00.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
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on June 18, 2001.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document describes a URN namespace that is engineered by the
   Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
   (OASIS) for naming persistent resources published by OASIS (such as
   OASIS Standards, XML Document Type Definitions, XML Schemas,
   Namespaces, Stylesheets, and other documents).

1. Introduction

   The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
   Standards (OASIS) produces many kinds of documents: specifications,
   working drafts, technical resolutions, schemas, stylesheets, etc.


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   OASIS wishes to provide global, distributed, persistent,
   location-independent names for these resources.

   The Extensible Markup Language (XML) requires that all resources
   provide a system identifier, which must be a URI, in addition to an
   optional public identifier (which provides an alternate mechanism
   for constructing identifiers) and many evolving specifications
   require authors to identify documents by URI alone (XML Namespaces,
   XML Schema, XSLT, etc.).

   Motivated by these observations, OASIS would like to assign URNs to
   some resources in order to retain unique, permanent
   location-independent names for them.

   This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2. Specification Template

   Namespace ID:

     "oasis" requested.

   Registration Information:

     Registration Version Number: 1
     Registration Date: 2000-12-18

   Declared registrant of the namespace:

     OASIS
     Karl Best

   Declaration of structure:

     The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs assigned by
     OASIS will have the following hierarchical structure:

     There are two branches at the top of the hierarchy: "names"
     and "member".

     The Names Hierarchy

       The NSS in the names hierarchy begins with a document class
       identifier. There are three classes of identifiers:
       "specification", "tc", and "technical".

       Specifications

         The "specification" hierarchy is for OASIS Specifications. The


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         general structure of the NSS in the specification hierarchy
         has the form:

           urn:oasis:names:specification:{specification-id}
                          :{type}{:subtype}?:{document-id}

         where "specification-id" is a unique identifier for the
         specification, "type" identifies the document type (document,
         schema, stylesheet, entity, xmlns, etc.), the optional
         "subtype" provides additional information about the document
         type (for example, stylesheet or schema language), and
         "document-id" is a unique identifier for the document.

         The Director of Technical Operations at OASIS assigns document
         types, subtypes, and all unique identifiers.

       Technical Committee Work Products

         The "tc" hierarchy is for work products of OASIS Technical
         Committees. The general structure of the NSS in the tc
         hierarchy has the form:

           urn:oasis:names:tc:{tc-id}:{type}{:subtype}?:{document-id}

         where "tc-id" is a unique identifier for the Technical
         Committee, and the remaining fields are assigned as per the
         specification hierarchy.

       Technical Papers

         The "technical" hierarchy identifies legacy documents
         (Technical Notes, Resolutions, Memoranda, and Research
         Papers). The general structure of the NSS in the "technical"
         hierarchies has the form:

           urn:oasis:names:technical:{document-type}
                          :{document-id}:{amendment-id}

         The document type is one of the following: "note",
         "resolution", "memorandum", or "researchpaper".

         The document and amendment identifiers are derived from the
         legacy system for naming these documents. The document
         identifier consists of a two digit year and a sequential
         number, the amendment identifier is the year of the amendment.

     The Members Hierarchy

       The NSS in the members hiearchy begins with a unique member


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       identifier assigned by OASIS. The string following the member
       identifier is opaque. For example:

         urn:oasis:member:A00024:x

       The member identifiers will be assigned by The Director of
       Technical Operations at OASIS. The opaque string is defined by
       the owner of the branch that begins with
       "urn:oasis:member:{member-id}:".

   Relevant ancillary documentation:

     None

   Identifier uniqueness considerations:

     Identifier uniqueness will be enforced by the Director of
     Technical Operations who assigns unique identifiers to all
     documents identified by URN.

   Identifier persistence considerations:

     OASIS is committed to maintaining the accessability and
     persistence of all the resources that are assigned URNs.

   Process of identifier assignment:

     Assignment is limited to the owner and those authorities that
     are specifically designated by the owner. OASIS will assign
     portions of its namespace (specifically, those under the
     members hierarchy) for assignment by other parties.

   Process of identifier resolution:

     The owner will distribute catalogs (OASIS TR9401 Catalogs)
     that map the assigned URNs to resource identifiers (e.g.,
     URLs). In addition, the owner may provide an online resolution
     service based on RFC2483.

     The owner will authorize additional resolution services as
     appropriate.

   Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

     URNs are lexically equivalent if they are lexically identical.

   Conformance with URN Syntax:

     No special considerations.


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   Validation mechanism:

     None specified. The owner will publish OASIS TR9401 Catalogs.
     The presence of a URN in a catalog indicates that it is valid.

   Scope:

     Global


3. Examples

   The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are
   listed for pedagogical reasons only.

      urn:oasis:names:specification:docbook:dtd:xml:4.1.2
      urn:oasis:names:tc:docbook:dtd:xml:docbook:5.0b1
      urn:oasis:names:technical:memo:9502:1995
      urn:oasis:member:A00024:x

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]  Goldfarb, C. F., "ISO (International Organization for
        Standardization) ISO 8879:1986(E) Information Processing --
        Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language
        (SGML)", 1986.

   [2]  W3C, XML WG, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0", February
        1998,
        <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.

   [3]  W3C, Namespaces WG, "Namespaces in XML", January 1999,
        <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names>.

   [4]  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>.

   [5]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

   [6]  Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, "URI Resolution Services Necessary
        for URN Resolution", RFC 2483, January 1999.






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Authors' Addresses

   Karl Best
   OASIS, Inc.
   P.O. Box 455
   Billerica, MA  01821
   US

   EMail: karl.best@oasis-open.org


   Norman Walsh
   Sun Microsystems, Inc.
   One Network Drive
   MS UBUR02-201
   Burlington, MA  01803-0902
   US

   EMail: Norman.Walsh@East.Sun.COM
































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Full Copyright Statement

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.

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Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.



















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