Network Working Group M. Mealling
Internet-Draft Network Solutions, Inc.
Expires: May 18, 2001 November 17, 2000
The IANA XML Registry
draft-mealling-iana-xmlns-registry-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
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 May 18, 2001.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This documenet describes an IANA maintained registry for IETF
standards which use XML related items such as Namespaces, DTD,
Schemas, and RDF Schemas.
1. Introduction
Over the past few years XML has become a widely used method for data
markup. There have already been several IETF Working Groups that
have produced standards that define XML DTDs, XML Namespaces and XML
Schemas. EAch one of these technologies uses URIs[1] to identify
their respective versions. For example, a given XML document defines
its DTD using the DOCTYPE element. This element, like SGML, has a
PUBLIC and a SYSTEM identifier. It is standard practice within W3C
standards to forego the use of the PUBLIC identifier in favor of
'well known' SYSTEM identifiers. There have been several IETF
standards that have simply created non-existent URIs in order to
Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 1]
Internet-Draft IANA XML Registry November 2000
simply identify but not resolve the SYSTEM identifier for some given
XML document.
This document seeks to standardize this practice by creating an IANA
maintained registry of XML elements so that document authors and
implementors have a well maintained and authoritative location for
their XML elements. As part of this standard, the IANA will both
house the public representation of the document and assign it a
Uniform Resource Name that can be used as the URI in any URI based
identification components of XML.
2. Registerable Documents
2.1 The Assigned URIs
All elements registered in this registry will generate a URN of the
form:
urn:iana:xml:<class>:<id>
where <class> is the type of the document being registered (see
below). <id^gt; is a unique id generated by the IANA based on any
means the IANA deems necessary to maintain uniqueness.
The IANA will also maintain a file server available via at least
HTTP that contains all of the registered elements in some publicly
accessible file space (in the same way that all of the IANAs
registered elements are available via
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/.
2.2 Document Types
The list of types of XML documents that can be registered with the
IANA are:
dtD -- An XML document that contains a DOCTYPE element can identify
its DTD via both a PUBLIC identifier and a SYSTEM identifier. The
URN assigned by the IANA can be used as the value of the SYSTEM
identifier.
ns -- XML Namespaces are named by a URI. They have no real,
machine-parseable representation other than the specifications
that define them. Thus the element registered will be the
specification (or a pointer to it). The URN assigned by the IANA
will be the XML Namespace's name.
xmlschema -- XML Schemas are also identified by a URI but their
contents are machine parseable. The IANA registered document will
be the XML Schema file. The URN the IANA assigns can be used as
the URI for the schema.
rdfschema -- The Resource Description Format (RDF) is an XML
Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 2]
Internet-Draft IANA XML Registry November 2000
serialization of a connected graph based data model used for
metadata expression. RDF makes use of schemas for RDF that
express grammars about relationships between URIs. These grammars
are identified by URIs. The URN assigned by the IANA can be used
as the identifying URI.
3. Registration Procedures1
Until such time as the IANA requests or implements an automated
process for the registration of these elements, any specifications
wishing to do so must make that request part of the IANA
considerations section of their respective documents
4. IANA Considerations
This documents seeks to create a rather large registry for which the
IANA (at the direction of the IESG) will primarily be responsible.
The amount of effort required to maintain this registry is not
insignificant and the policies and procedures surrounding any
approval process are non-trivial.
References
[1] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R.T. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August
1998.
Author's Address
Michael Mealling
Network Solutions, Inc.
505 Huntmar Park Drive
Herndon, VA 22070
US
Phone: +1 770-921-2251
EMail: michaelm@netsol.com
URI: http://www.netsol.com
Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 3]
Internet-Draft IANA XML Registry November 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 implmentation 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.
Mealling Expires May 18, 2001 [Page 4]
