Network Working Group P. Saint-Andre
Internet-Draft Cisco
Intended status: Standards Track July 10, 2011
Expires: January 11, 2012

vCard KIND:application
draft-saintandre-vcarddav-thing-02

Abstract

This document defines a value of "application" for the vCard KIND property so that vCards can be used to represent software applications.

Status of this Memo

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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 11, 2012.

Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Version 4 of the vCard specification [VCARD] defines a new "KIND" property to specify the type of entity that a vCard represents. During its work on the base vCard4 specification, the VCARDDAV Working Group defined values of "individual", "organization", "group", and "location" for the KIND property. The working group considered but then removed a value of "thing" to represent any type of physical entity, machine, software application, etc., with the expectation that such a value might be defined in a vCard extension. This document does not define a generic "thing" value, but instead defines a more narrow "application" value so that vCards can be used to represent software applications.

2. Meaning

When the KIND property has a value of "application", the vCard represents a software application such as a server, an online service (e.g., a chatroom), or an automated software bot. More formally, an "application" is functionally equivalent to the 'applicationProcess' object class used in the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol [RFC4519] and derived from the Open Systems Interconnection model [X.521] and [X.200]. As one example of the "application" KIND, vCards are currently used in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol [RFC6120] to represent instant messaging servers that are deployed on the network.

The properties included in an application's vCard apply to one of the following:

  • The application itself (e.g., the FN property might represent the friendly name of an application service, the URL property might represent a website that contains further information about the service, and the ADR, GEO, and TZ properties might represent the physical address, geographical location, and timezone of the machine where the service is hosted).

  • An organization or person that makes the application available on the network (e.g., the LOGO property might represent the corporate logo of a service provider).

  • A person or role that maintains the application (e.g., the TEL, EMAIL, and IMPP properties might represent ways to contact a server administrator).

Because software applications do not have work places and personal lives, it makes no sense to include the "work" and "home" values of the TYPE parameter in an application's vCard (see Section 5.6 of [VCARD]).

The following base properties make sense for vCards that represent software applications (this list is not exhaustive, and other properties might be applicable as well):

  • ADR
  • EMAIL
  • FN
  • GEO
  • IMPP
  • KEY
  • KIND
  • LANG
  • LOGO
  • NOTE
  • ORG
  • PHOTO
  • REV
  • SOURCE
  • TEL
  • TZ
  • URL

Although it might be desirable to define a more fine-grained taxonomy of applications (e.g., a KIND of "application" with a subtype of "server" or "IM server"), such a taxonomy is out of scope for this document.

3. Example

The following example of an XMPP server is borrowed from [XEP-0292] and uses the XML representation of vCard described in [VCARDXML].

<vcard xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:vcard-4.0"> 
  <fn><text>jabber.org IM service</text></fn>
  <url><uri>http://www.jabber.org/</uri></url>
  <lang>
    <parameters><pref>1</pref></parameters>
    <language-tag>en</language-tag>
  </lang>
  <email><text>xmpp@jabber.org</text></email>
  <impp><uri>xmpp:jabber.org</uri></impp>
  <logo><uri>http://www.jabber.org/images/logo.png</uri></logo>
  <geo><uri>geo:42.25,-91.05</uri></geo>
  <tz><text>America/Chicago</text></tz>
  <source><uri>xmpp:jabber.org?vcard</uri></source>
  <rev><timestamp>19990104T122100Z</timestamp></rev>
  <kind><text>application</text></kind>
</vcard>
        

4. IANA Considerations

The IANA is requested to add "application" to the registry of property values for vCard4. In conformance with Section 10.2.6 of [VCARD], the registration is as follows, where the reference is to RFCXXXX.

Value:
application
Purpose:
The entity represented by the vCard is a software application (e.g., a server, an online service such as a chatroom, or an automated software bot).
Conformance:
This value can be used with the "KIND" property.
Example:
See Section 3 of RFCXXXX.

[[NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: Please change XXXX to the number assigned to this specification, and remove this paragraph on publication.]]

5. Security Considerations

Use of vCards to represent physical objects and software applications is not envisioned to introduce security considerations beyond those specified for vCards in [VCARD].

6. Acknowledgements

Thanks to Cyrus Daboo, Barry Leiba, Kepeng Li, and Simon Perreault for their feedback.

7. References

7.1. Normative References

[VCARD] Perreault, S, "vCard Format Specification", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardrev-22, May 2011.

7.2. Informative References

[RFC4519] Sciberras, A., "Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP): Schema for User Applications", RFC 4519, June 2006.
[RFC6120] Saint-Andre, P., "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core", RFC 6120, March 2011.
[VCARDXML] Perreault, S, "vCard XML Representation", Internet-Draft draft-ietf-vcarddav-vcardxml-11, May 2011.
[X.200] International Telecommunications Union, "Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - Basic Reference Model: The Basic Model", ITU-T Recommendation X.521, ISO Standard 9594-7, February 2001.
[X.521] International Telecommunications Union, "Information Technology - Open Systems Interconnection - The Directory: Selected Object Classes", ITU-T Recommendation X.200, ISO Standard 7498-1, July 1994.
[XEP-0292] Saint-Andre, P. and S. Mizzi, "vCard4 over XMPP", XSF XEP 0292, July 2011.

Author's Address

Peter Saint-Andre Cisco 1899 Wyknoop Street, Suite 600 Denver, CO 80202 USA Phone: +1-303-308-3282 EMail: psaintan@cisco.com