The 'profile' Link Relation Type
RFC 6906

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Independent Submission                                          E. Wilde
Request for Comments: 6906                               EMC Corporation
Category: Informational                                       March 2013
ISSN: 2070-1721

                    The 'profile' Link Relation Type

Abstract

   This specification defines the 'profile' link relation type that
   allows resource representations to indicate that they are following
   one or more profiles.  A profile is defined not to alter the
   semantics of the resource representation itself, but to allow clients
   to learn about additional semantics (constraints, conventions,
   extensions) that are associated with the resource representation, in
   addition to those defined by the media type and possibly other
   mechanisms.

Status of This Memo

   This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
   published for informational purposes.

   This is a contribution to the RFC Series, independently of any other
   RFC stream.  The RFC Editor has chosen to publish this document at
   its discretion and makes no statement about its value for
   implementation or deployment.  Documents approved for publication by
   the RFC Editor are not a candidate for any level of Internet
   Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 5741.

   Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
   and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
   http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6906.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
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   to this document.

Wilde                         Informational                     [Page 1]
RFC 6906                   "profile" Link Type                March 2013

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Terminology .....................................................3
   3. Profiles ........................................................3
      3.1. Profiles and Media Types ...................................4
      3.2. Profile Context ............................................5
   4. IANA Considerations .............................................5
   5. Examples ........................................................6
      5.1. hCard ......................................................6
      5.2. Dublin Core ................................................6
      5.3. Podcasts ...................................................7
   6. Security Considerations .........................................7
   7. Acknowledgements ................................................7
   8. References ......................................................7
      8.1. Normative References .......................................7
      8.2. Informative References .....................................7

1.  Introduction

   One of the foundations of the Internet and web architecture is the
   fact that resource representations communicated through protocols,
   such as SMTP or HTTP, are labeled with a 'media type', which allows a
   client to understand at run time what 'type' of resource
   representation it is handling.  Sometimes, it would be useful for
   servers and clients to include additional information about the
   nature of the resource.  This would allow a client understanding this
   additional information to react in a way specific to that
   specialization of the resource, where the specialization can be about
   constraints, conventions, extensions, or any other aspects that do
   not alter the basic media type semantics.  HTML 4 [HTML401] has such
   a mechanism built into the language, which is the 'profile' attribute
   of the 'head' element.  However, this mechanism is specific to HTML
   alone; at the time of writing, it seems as if HTML 5 will drop
   support for this mechanism entirely.

   RFC 5988 [RFC5988] "defines a framework for typed links that isn't
   specific to a particular serialisation or application.  It does so by
   redefining the link relation registry established by Atom to have a
   broader domain, and adding to it the relations that are defined by
   HTML."

   This specification registers a 'profile' link relation type according
   to the rules of RFC 5988 [RFC5988].  Links with this relation type
   can be used in representations that support typed links as well as in
   HTTP Link headers.  The profile link relation type is independent of
   the context in which it is used and does not constrain, in any way,
   the target of the linked URI.  In fact, for the purpose of this

Wilde                         Informational                     [Page 2]