A URN Namespace for Public Identifiers v04
Date: Tue, 08 May 2001 12:18:53 -0400
From: Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com>
To: urn-nid <urn-nid@apps.ietf.org>, internet-drafts@ietf.org
Cc: "entity-resolution@lists.oasis-open.org"
<entity-resolution@lists.oasis-open.org>
Subject: NID request for publicid (draft-urn-publicid-04.txt)
Here is draft 04, to replace all preceding drafts.
Network Working Group N. Walsh
Internet-Draft Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Expires: November 6, 2001 J. Cowan
Reuters Health Information
P. Grosso
Arbortext, Inc.
May 8, 2001
A URN Namespace for Public Identifiers
draft-urn-publicid-04
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 November 6, 2001.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a URN namespace that is designed to allow
Public Identifiers to be expressed in URI syntax.
1. Introduction
XML[1] external entities have two identifiers: a system identifier
and a public identifier. The system identifier is a URI, by
definition, but the public identifier is simply a string.
Historically, the system identifier of an external entity has been a
local, or system-specific identifier while the public identifier has
been a more global, persistent name.
Unfortunately, public identifiers do not fit neatly into the
existing web architecture because they are not legal URIs. Many new
specifications (XSLT, XML Schema, etc.) have the implicit or
explicit requirement that all external identifiers be URIs.
The purpose of this namespace is to allow public identifiers to be
encoded in URNs in a reliable, comparable way.
This document describes a scheme for representing public identifiers
as URNs by introducing a public identifier namespace, "publicid".
This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.
1.1 Public Identifiers
Any string which consists only of the public identifier characters
(defined by Production 13 of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
Second Edition[1]) is a legal public identifier.
In addition to the character set restriction, public identifiers
must be normalized by changing all strings of whitespace (the
characters #x20, #xD, and #xA, in this context) to single space
characters (#x20), and removing all leading and trailing whitespace.
In keeping with this specification's goal of allowing public
identifiers to be encoded in a reliable, comparable way, this
specification mandates that public identifiers be normalized before
encoding them into URNs. Throughout this specification, we assume
that normalization has already been performed.
1.2 Formal Public Identifiers
SGML[3] defines a restricted subset of public identifier called a
"Formal Public Identifier" (FPI).
FPIs are strings composed from the same range of characters as
public identifiers, but with an explicit internal structure. The
structure of Formal Public Identifiers is normatively described in
SGML[3]; we review it here for convenience.
Most Formal Public Identifiers consist of the following fields, in
this order: an owner identifier, a public text class, a public text
description, a public text language or public text designating
sequence, and an optional public text display version.
Owner identifiers may begin with "-//" or "+//"; otherwise "//" is
used to delimit fields in the FPI (with the exception of the public
text class which is delimited from the public text description by a
space).
In other words, most FPIs look like this:
owner//class description//language//version
and most owners begin with "+//" or "-//", although they are not
required to. Here are some example FPIs:
+//IDN python.org//DTD XML Bookmark Exchange Language 1.0//EN//XML
-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN
-//ArborText::prod//DTD Help Navigation Document::19970708//EN
ISO/IEC 10179:1996//DTD DSSSL Architecture//EN
ISO 8879:1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN
This document describes an algorithm for encoding public identifiers
into URNs that explicitly allows the structured nature of formal
public identifiers to be preserved. However, an algorithm for
correctly identifying a Formal Public Identifier and determining the
various fields within it is out of scope for this document and not
necessary for the implementation of this URN namespace.
2. Specification Template
Namespace ID:
"publicid" requested.
Registration Information:
Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: 2001-05-08
Declared registrant of the namespace:
Norman Walsh
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
One Network Drive MS UBURO2-201
Burlington, MA
01803-0902
Norman.Walsh@East.Sun.COM
Declaration of structure:
The Namespace Specific String (NSS) for URNs in the "publicid"
namespace has the following structure:
urn:publicid:{transcribed-public-identifier}
Where:
{transcribed-public-identifier} is the text of the public
identifier transcribed according to the following rules:
- A space in the public identifier is transcribed as "+".
Whitespace normalization must be performed before
constructing a URN in the "publicid" namespace,
therefore adjacent "+" characters never occur in URNs in
this namespace.
- The sequence of characters "//" is transcribed as ":".
- The sequence of characters "::" is transcribed as ";".
- A literal "+" character is transcribed as %2B.
- A literal ":" character (except in "::") is transcribed
as %3A.
- A literal "/" character (except in "//") is transcribed
as %2F.
- A literal ";" character is transcribed as %3B.
- A literal "'" character is transcribed as %27.
- A literal "?" character is transcribed as %3F.
- A literal "#" character is transcribed as %23.
- A literal "%" character is transcribed as %25.
The special rules for "//" and "::" are designed to preserve
the structured nature of formal public identifiers without
requiring the translator to have special knowledge of FPI
syntax.
The rules for "+", ":", "/", and ";" are required to preserve
literal occurrences of these characters in the 'publicid'
URN namespace.
The remaining characters, " " (space), "'", "?", "#", and
"%", are the only other legal characters in public
identifiers that cannot be literally transcribed into a URN
by the rules of RFC 2141[5] and RFC 2396[6].
Relevant ancillary documentation:
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Version 1.0 Second Edition[1]
Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)[3]
Registration procedures for public text owner identifiers[4]
Identifier uniqueness considerations:
The identifier uniqueness considerations for URNs in the
"publicid" namespace are the same as the identifier uniqueness
considerations for public identifiers. Formal Public
Identifiers with registered owner identifiers are required to
be unique. For unregistered owner identifiers and informal
public identifiers, they may or may not be unique. No
enforcement policy can be asserted.
Identifier persistence considerations:
The persistence of URNs in the "publicid" namespace is the
same as the persistence of the corresponding public
identifier.
The "publicid" namespace is available for a wide range of
uses, it cannot be subjected to a uniform persistence policy.
As a general rule, formal public identifiers with registered
owner identifiers are more likely to be persistent than
informal public identifiers or formal public identifiers with
unregistered owner identifiers.
One exception to this rule is the "IDN" scheme for producing a
registered owner identifier from a domain name. That scheme
contains at least all the weaknesses associated with the
persistence of domain names.
It is important to note that a properly registered owner
identifier can apply any policy desired to the portion of the
"publicid" URN namespace identified by that owner identifier.
Process of identifier assignment:
Identifiers in the "publicid" namespace are assigned by
applying the conversions described above to a public
identifier. In order to provide a URN in this namespace for a
resource that does not have a public identifier, one must be
created (according to the rules for creating public
identifiers).
There is no requirement that a resource have only one public
identifier.
Process of identifier resolution:
Identifiers in the "publicid" namespace may be resolved by the
same policies and procedures as public identifiers. Public
identifiers can be resolved in many different ways. Many
existing systems provide facilities for resolving them by way
of OASIS TR9401[8] Catalog files. Other systems resolve them
by mapping each component to a local pathname component. And
some systems simply "know about" a fixed set of public
identifiers. In addition, URNs in the 'publicid' namespace may
be resolvable by other mechanisms unique to URIs (such as
caches).
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
Whitespace normalization is performed before constructing a
URN in the "publicid" namespace, so URNs are lexically
equivalent if they are lexically identical.
Conformance with URN Syntax:
No special considerations. URNs in this namespace conform to
both RFC 2141 and RFC 2396.
Validation mechanism:
None specified.
Scope:
Global
3. Examples
The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are
listed for pedagogical reasons only.
"ISO/IEC 10179:1996//DTD DSSSL Architecture//EN" becomes
"urn:publicid:ISO%2FIEC+10179%3A1996:DTD+DSSSL+Architecture:EN"
"ISO 8879:1986//ENTITIES Added Latin 1//EN" becomes
"urn:publicid:ISO+8879%3A1986:ENTITIES+Added+Latin+1:EN"
"-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN" becomes
"urn:publicid:-:OASIS:DTD+DocBook+XML+V4.1.2:EN"
"+//IDN example.org//DTD XML Bookmarks 1.0//EN//XML" becomes
"urn:publicid:+:IDN+example.org:DTD+XML+Bookmarks+1.0:EN:XML"
"-//ArborText::prod//DTD Help Document::19970708//EN" becomes
"urn:publicid:-:ArborText;prod:DTD+Help+Document;19970708:EN"
"foo" becomes
"urn:publicid:foo"
"3+3=6" becomes
"urn:publicid:3%2B3=6"
"-//Acme, Inc.//DTD Book Version 1.0" becomes
"urn:publicid:-:Acme,+Inc.:DTD+Book+Version+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
[1] W3C, XML WG, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Second
Edition", February 1998,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml>.
[2] JTC 1, SC 2, "ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) ISO 2022:1994 Information technology --
Character code structure and extension techniques (fourth
edition).", 1994.
[3] JTC 1, SC 34, "ISO 8879:1986 Information processing -- Text and
office systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)",
1986.
[4] JTC 1, SC 34, "ISO/IEC 9070:1991 Information technology -- SGML
support facilities -- Registration procedures for public text
owner identifiers", 1991.
[5] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[6] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, Aug 1998.
[7] Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of Languages", RFC
3066, January 2001.
[8] Grosso, P., "Entity Management: OASIS Technical Resolution
9401:1997 (Amendment 2 to TR 9401)", Sep 1997,
<http://www.oasis-open.org/html/tr9401.html>.
Authors' Addresses
Norman Walsh
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
One Network Drive MS UBURO2-201
Burlington, MA 01803-0902
US
EMail: Norman.Walsh@East.Sun.COM
John Cowan
Reuters Health Information
45 West 36th St, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10018
US
EMail: jcowan@reutershealth.com
Paul Grosso
Arbortext, Inc.
1000 Victors Way
Ann Arbor, MI 48108-2744
US
EMail: pgrosso@arbortext.com
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