Subject: unofficial copy of ndw NID draft

From: Leslie Daigle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2000 21:59:43 -0400

Network Working Group                                           N. Walsh
Internet-Draft                                           No organization
Expires: January 12, 2001                                  July 14, 2000

                    A URN Namespace for Norman Walsh
                        draft-nwalsh-urn-ndw-00

Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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   This Internet-Draft will expire on January 12, 2001.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   This document describes a URN namespace that is engineered by Norman
   Walsh for naming personal resources such as XML Schema Namespaces,
   Schemas, Stylesheets, and other documents.

1. Introduction

   For some years, the author has been producing internet resources:
   documents, schemas, stylesheets, etc. In addition to providing URLs
   for these resources, the author wishes to provide
   location-independent names. In the past, this has been accomplised
   with Formal Public Identifiers (FPIs). FPIs provided the author with
   a mechanism for assigning unique, permanent location-independent
   names to resources.

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   The Extensible Markup Language (XML) requires that all resources
   provide a system identifier which must be a URI and XML Namespaces
   require authors to identify namespaces by URI alone (it is not
   possible to provide an FPI for an XML Namespace identifier).

   Motivated by these observations, the author would like to assign
   URNs to some resources in order to retain unique, permanent
   location-independent names for them.

   This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2. Specification Template

   Namespace ID:

       "ndw" requested.

   Registration Information:

       Registration Version Number: 1
       Registration Date: 2000-07-14

   Declared registrant of the namespace:

       Norman Walsh
       [email-masked]

   Declaration of structure:

       Opaque. The URNs assigned by the author will have internal
         structure, but the structure is not expected to be manifestly
         obvious to an outside observer.

   Relevant ancillary documentation:

       None

   Identifier uniqueness considerations:

       The versioned and distinct nature of the resources themselves
         makes duplication unlikely, but in the interest of providing
         concrete assurances, the owner agrees to maintain a table of
         assigned URNs and to absolutely avoid duplication by
         consulting that table before each new URN is published.

   Identifier persistence considerations:

       To the best of the namespace owner's ability, the usability of
         URNs will last as long as the resources they identify are

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         reasonably useful.

   Process of identifier assignment:

       Assignment is limited to the owner and those authorities that
         are specifically designated by the owner.

   Process of identifier resolution:

       The owner will distribute catalogs (e.g., OASIS Open TR9401
         Catalogs) that map the subset of URNs considered useful to
         resource identifiers (e.g., URLs). In addition, the owner will
         provide an online resolution service based on RFC2483.
       The owner will authorize additional resolution services as
         appropriate.

   Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

       URNs are lexically equivalent if they are lexically identical.

   Conformance with URN Syntax:

       No special considerations.

   Validation mechanism:

       None specified. The owner will publish the table of assigned
         URNs online.

   Scope:

       Global

3. Examples

   The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are
   listed for pedagogical reasons only.

      urn:ndw:stylesheets:xsl:docbook:1.15
      urn:ndw:doctypes:slides:1.25
      urn:ndw:xsl:documentation:1.0

4. Security Considerations

   There are no additional security considerations other than those
   normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.

References

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   [1]  Goldfarb, C. F., "ISO (International Organization for
        Standardization) ISO 8879:1986(E) Information Processing --
        Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language
        (SGML)", 1986.

   [2]  W3C, XML WG, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0", February
        1998, <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.

   [3]  W3C, Namespaces WG, "Namespaces in XML", January 1999,
        <http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names>.

   [4]  OASIS, Entity Mgmt. TC, "Entity Management: OASIS Technical
        Resolution 9401:1997 (Amendment 2 to TR 9401)", January 1994,
        <http://www.oasis-open.org/html/a401.htm>.

   [5]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

   [6]  Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, "URI Resolution Services Necessary
        for URN Resolution", RFC 2483, January 1999.

Author's Address

   Norman Walsh
   No organization

   EMail: [email-masked]
   URI:   http://nwalsh.com/~ndw/

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Full Copyright Statement

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Acknowledgement

   Funding for the RFC editor function is currently provided by the
   Internet Society.

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