Internet-Draft Ryan Moats draft-ietf-urn-ietf-02.txt AT&T Expires in six months July 1997 A URN Namespace for IETF Documents Filename: draft-ietf-urn-ietf-02.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 how a new namespace may be proposed, 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 and the minutes of working groups (WG) and birds of a feather (BOF) meetings that occur during IETF conferences. This namespace can be supported within the URN framework and the currently proposed syntax for URNs. 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. Expires 1/31/98 [Page 1]
INTERNET DRAFT A URN Namespace for IETF Documents July 1997 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) / ("mtg-" number "-" wgbofname) family = "rfc" / "std" / "fyi" number = 1*DIGIT wgbofname = 1*LETDIGIT LETDIGIT = DIGIT / %x41..%x5a / %x61..%x7a DIGIT = %x30..%x39 The ABNF specification for "family" 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. The ABNF specification for "wgbofname" is based on the current and past abbreviations for working groups and BOFs in the IETF. If a working group or BOF is created that used characters outside the range of this ABNF specification, this specification will need to be updated. Any system intended to resolve names for this namespace should be written with the awareness that this could occur at any time. 1.3. Assignment of URNs in this Namespace URNs are assigned in the namespace in two ways. The first is when a new RFC, FYI or STD is passed by the IESG and published by the RFC Editor. This new document will have a new series number and will therefore define a new URN. The document mappings maintained by the RFC Editor (the index files "rfc-index.txt", "fyi-index.txt", "std- index.txt") are defined to be the definitive statement of the assignment of RFC Family URNs in this namespace. The second way a URN is assigned is when a working group or birds of a feather files meeting minutes as part of an IETF conference. The list of minutes maintained by the IETF for each working group and Expires 1/31/98 [Page 2]
INTERNET DRAFT A URN Namespace for IETF Documents July 1997 conference in the subtree pointed at by the URL ftp://ietf.org/ietf/ is considered the definitive assignment of URNs for working group or birds of a feather minutes. 1.4. Additional Reserved Characters No characters in addition to those specified in [1] are reserved by this namespace. 1.5. Additional Lexical Equivalence Relations Note that the entire URN is case-insensitive, because of the definition of the NSS. 1.6. 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, 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. Comments Readers will notice that this namespace does not include internet drafts. While these documents are published by the internet drafts editor, they were excluded because they do not provide persistent resources to refer to (all internet drafts expire after six months). This is as opposed to the RFC family of documents which never expire (an RFC may be obsoleted or superceded but the actual RFC document itself does not expire). 3. 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 Expires 1/31/98 [Page 3]
INTERNET DRAFT A URN Namespace for IETF Documents July 1997 URN has incorrect syntax. 4. Acknowledgments Thanks to various members of the URN working group for comments on earlier drafts of this document. The work described in 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 January 31, 1998. Expires 1/31/98 [Page 4]
