The IETF XML Registry
RFC 3688
Document | Type |
RFC - Best Current Practice
(January 2004; No errata)
Also known as BCP 81
Was draft-mealling-iana-xmlns-registry (individual in app area)
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Author | Michael Mealling | ||
Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 3688 (Best Current Practice) | |
Action Holders |
(None)
|
||
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Ted Hardie | ||
Send notices to | <michaelm@neonym.net> |
Network Working Group M. Mealling Request for Comments: 3688 VeriSign, Inc. BCP: 81 January 2004 Category: Best Current Practice The IETF XML Registry 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 (2004). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes an IANA maintained registry for IETF standards which use Extensible Markup Language (XML) related items such as Namespaces, Document Type Declarations (DTDs), Schemas, and Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schemas. 1. Introduction Over the past few years, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) [W3C.REC-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 Document Type Definitions (DTDs), XML Namespaces [W3C.REC-xml-names], and XML Schemas [W3C.REC-xmlschema- 1]. Each one of these technologies uses Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) [RFC2396] and other standardized identifiers to identify various components. For example, while it has been the practice within some standards that use Document Type Definitions (DTDs) to forego the use of the PUBLIC identifiers in favor of 'well known' SYSTEM identifiers, it has proven to be more trouble than its worth to attempt to standardize SYSTEM identifiers. The result is that several IETF standards that have simply created non-resolvable URIs in order to simply identify but not resolve the DTD for some given XML document. This document seeks to standardize and improve these practices by creating an IANA maintained registry of XML element identifiers so that document authors and implementors have a well maintained and Mealling Best Current Practice [Page 1] RFC 3688 The IETF XML Registry January 2004 authoritative location for their XML elements. As part of this standard, the IANA will maintain: o the public representation of the document, o the URI for the elements if one is provided at the time of registration, o a registry of Public Identifiers as URIs. In the case where the registrant does not request a particular URI, the IANA will assign it a Uniform Resource Name (URN) that follows [RFC3553]. 2. Terminology The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 3. Registerable Documents 3.1. The Assigned/Registered URI All elements (except PUBLIC identifiers) in this registry will require a URI in order to be registered. If the registrant wishes to have a URI assigned, then a URN of the form urn:ietf:params:xml:<class>:<id> will be assigned where <class> is the type of the document being registered (see below). <id> is a unique id generated by the IANA based on any means the IANA deems necessary to maintain uniqueness and persistence. NOTE: in order for a URN of this type to be assigned, the item being registered MUST have been through the IETF consensus process. Basically, this means that it must be documented in a RFC. The RFC 3553 [RFC3553] URN registration template is found in Section 6. The IANA will also maintain a file server available via at least HTTP and FTP that contains all of the registered elements in some publicly accessible file space in the same way that all of the IANA's registered elements are available via http://www.iana.org/assignments/. While the directory structure of this server is up to the IANA, it is suggested that the files be organized by the <class> and the individual files have the <id> as their filename. Mealling Best Current Practice [Page 2] RFC 3688 The IETF XML Registry January 2004 Implementors are warned that they should not programatically rely on those resources being available or the directory structure remaining static for any reason. It is explicitly recognized that some software tools attempt to download DTDs, schema, etc., 'on the fly' and that developers should understand when this is done and when to not reference IANA network resources as a 'schema download repository'. This is the reason that the IANA will not register or provide SYSTEM identifiers. 3.2. Registerable Classes The list of types of XML elements that can be registered with the IANA are: publicid -- An XML document that contains a DOCTYPE declaration orShow full document text