Internet-Draft Ryan Moats
draft-ietf-urn-ietf-00.txt AT&T
Expires in six months May 1997
URN Namespace for RFC series documents
Filename: draft-ietf-urn-ietf-00.txt
Status of This Memo
This document is an Internet-Draft. 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.''
To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check
the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-
Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net
(Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East
Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast).
Abstract
A system for Uniform Resource Names (URNs) must be capable of
supporting new naming systems. As an example of the sort of
information that needs to be supplied when proposing new namepsaces,
this document presents a naming system based on the RFC family of
documents (RFCs, STDs, and FYIs) developed by the IETF and published
by the RFC editor. This namespace can be supported within the URN
framework and the currently proposed syntax for URNs.
0. Document History and Status
With the first draft of this document, the only issue that has
occured on the list is the discussion on functional equivalence for
this namespace (see section 1.5). There are currently two positions
on this: the first is what is specified here, and the second is that
there is no equivalency for this namespace, e.g. a resolver receiving
a request must return ONLY the resource named by that request.
Expires 11/97 [Page 1]
INTERNET DRAFT URN Namespace for RFC series documents May 1997
1. Namespace Syntax
Consistent with the URN syntax specification [1], each namespace must
specify syntax related information that is specific to that
namespace. This section covers these specifications.
1.1. Namespace Identifier (NID)
The namespace identifier for this namespace is "ietf".
1.2. Namespace Specific String (NSS)
The Namespace Specific String has the following ABNF [2]
specification:
NSS = family ":" number
family = "rfc" | "std" | "fyi"
number = 1*DIGIT
DIGIT = %x30..%x39
The ABNF specification for "family" above is based on the current
documents in the RFC family. As new document series are added to the
IETF family by the IESG (or its successor), this ABNF specification
will need to be updated. Any system intended to resolve names for
this namespace should be written with the awareness that a new
document series may be introduced at any time.
1.3. Additional Reserved Characters
No characters in addition to those specified in [1] are reserved by
this namespace.
1.4. Additional Lexical Equivalence Relations
Note that the entire URN is case-insensitive, because of the
defintion of the NSS.
1.5. Functional Equivalence Relations
Rules for equivalence in this namespace are embedded in the document
mappings maintained by the RFC Editor (the index files "rfc-
index.txt", "fyi-index.txt", "std-index.txt"). A resource is
equivalent to the set of resources implied by the "(Also...)"
construct in these mappings. As an example, the URN
"urn:ietf:rfc:1661" is equivalent to th URN "urn:ietf:std:51" because
the "rfc-index.txt" map shows that RFC 1661 is also STD 51. However,
Expires 11/97 [Page 2]
INTERNET DRAFT URN Namespace for RFC series documents May 1997
the URN "urn:ietf:std:51" is equivalent to the SET of URNs
"urn:ietf:rfc:1661" and "urn:ietf:rfc:1662" since the "std-index.txt"
shows that STD 51 is also RFC 1661 and RFC 1662. Therefore, a
resolver receiving a N2R request for "urn:ietf:std:51" MUST return
either STD 51 or BOTH RFC 1661 and RFC 1662.
2. Security Considerations
Because this namespace defines no additional reserved characters, it
does not add any security considerations beyond those inherent from
the existence of the reserved characters from [1]. Further, the
definition of the NSS above does not use any of the reserved
characters from [1], which means that resolvers for this namespace
may be considered "secure" in the sense that any escaping of
characters in the NSS MUST result in the resolver indicating that the
URN has incorrect syntax.
3. Acknowledgments
Thanks to various members of the URN working group for comments on
earlier drafts of this document. This document is partially
supported by the National Science Foundation, Cooperative Agreement
NCR-9218179.
4. References
Request For Comments (RFC) and Internet Draft documents are available
from <URL:ftp://ftp.internic.net> and numerous mirror sites.
[1] R. Moats, "URN Syntax," RFC 2141, May 5, 1997.
[2] D. Crocker, P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF," Internet Draft (work in pro-
gress), January 1997.
5. Author's Address
Ryan Moats
AT&T
15621 Drexel Circle
Omaha, NE 68135-2358
USA
Phone: +1 402 894-9456
EMail: jayhawk@att.com
This Internet Draft expires November 30, 1997.
Expires 11/97 [Page 3]
INTERNET DRAFT URN Namespace for RFC series documents May 1997
Expires 11/97 [Page 4]
