Guidelines for the Use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) within IETF Protocols
RFC 3470
| Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(January 2003; Errata)
Also known as BCP 70
Was draft-hollenbeck-ietf-xml-guidelines (individual in app area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Last updated | 2020-01-21 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata bibtex | ||
| Stream | WG state | (None) | |
| Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
| IESG | IESG state | RFC 3470 (Best Current Practice) | |
| Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| Telechat date | |||
| Responsible AD | Ned Freed | ||
| IESG note | published 24-Jan-2003 | ||
| Send notices to | <mrose+mtr.ietf@dbc.mtview.ca.us> | ||
Network Working Group S. Hollenbeck
Request for Comments: 3470 VeriSign, Inc.
BCP: 70 M. Rose
Category: Best Current Practice Dover Beach Consulting, Inc.
L. Masinter
Adobe Systems Incorporated
January 2003
Guidelines for the Use of Extensible Markup Language (XML)
within IETF Protocols
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the
Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a framework for structuring
data. While it evolved from Standard Generalized Markup Language
(SGML) -- a markup language primarily focused on structuring
documents -- XML has evolved to be a widely-used mechanism for
representing structured data.
There are a wide variety of Internet protocols being developed; many
have need for a representation for structured data relevant to their
application. There has been much interest in the use of XML as a
representation method. This document describes basic XML concepts,
analyzes various alternatives in the use of XML, and provides
guidelines for the use of XML within IETF standards-track protocols.
Table of Contents
Conventions Used In This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1. Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Intended Audience. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 XML Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 XML Users, Support Groups, and Additional
Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. XML Selection Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. XML Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Hollenbeck, et al. Best Current Practice [Page 1]
RFC 3470 XML within IETF Protocols January 2003
4. XML Use Considerations and Recommendations . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1 XML Syntax and Well-Formedness . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 XML Information Set . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3 Syntactic Restrictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4 XML Declarations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.5 XML Processing Instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.6 XML Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.7 Validity and Extensibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.8 Semantics as Well as Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.9 Namespaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.9.1 Namespaces and Attributes. . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.10 Element and Attribute Design Considerations. . . . . . 14
4.11 Binary Data and Text with Control Characters . . . . . 16
4.12 Incremental Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.13 Entity Declarations and Entity References . . . . . . 16
4.14 External References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.15 URI Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.16 White Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.17 Interaction with the IANA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5. Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1 Character Sets and Encodings . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2 Language Declaration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.3 Other Internationalization Considerations . . . . . . 20
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
8. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
11. Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
12. Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Conventions Used In This Document
This document recommends, as policy, what specifications for Internet
protocols -- and, in particular, IETF standards track protocol
documents -- should include as normative language within them. The
capitalized keywords "SHOULD", "MUST", "REQUIRED", etc. are used in
the sense of how they would be used within other documents with the
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