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)
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Authors | Marshall Rose , Scott Hollenbeck , Larry Masinter | ||
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) | |
Action Holders |
(None)
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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 theShow full document text