xml-dev - Reluctant-ly yrs, Paul

[Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net>]

Rough draft. Comments appreciated. Note that getting a number-identified
URN namespace is easier and faster than getting a name-identified one so
that is the best first step. Someone more ambitious (thanks for
volunteering, David) could start a standards-track process towards getting
a name-identified one.
---
This is an application for a URN namespace based on time-qualified email
addresses for abstract objects. It is prompted by the rampant abuse of
URLs as names for XML namespaces and as the names for other abstract,
unretrievable objects.

Namespace ID:

        IANA Assigned

Registration Information:

        Registration version number: 1
        Registration date: 1999-0?-??

Declared registrant of the namespace:

        Paul Prescod
        paul@prescod.net
        ISOGEN International Corp.
        http://www.isogen.com

Declaration of structure:

        The identifier structure is as follows:

        urn:urn-<assigned number>:<addr-spec>:<date> [ : <qualifier> ]

        The addr-spec syntax is defined in RFC822.

        The date production is defined by ISO 8601 as the "recommended
        primary notation" and must specify a year, month and day. 

        A date/addr-spec pair is called a time-qualified mailbox address
	(TQM address).

        The person, organization or group of people that owns the 
	addressed conceptual mailbox (see RFC822) on that date are 
	known as the address owners.  Alternately, the person, 
	organization, or group that owns or owned the domain on
	the date could assign control of TQM address without actually 
	setting up a mailbox.

        If ownership of the email address or entire domain is transferred 
	during a particular day then no affected TQM address is legal

        The structure of the optional qualifier portion is defined by each 
	address owner within the constraints defined by RFC 2141. They might
	sub-delegate responsibility by defining some substructure in the
	qualifier. Address owners are recommended that they are ultimately
	responsible for the persistence of their entire namespace. They
	might use additional time qualifiers to help ensure this.

Relevant ancillary documentation:

        ISO 8601 defines the date syntax used.
        IETF RFC822 defines the mailbox syntax used.

Identifier uniqueness considerations:

	The basic functioning of Internet email depends upon email addresses
	being globally unique at any particular time.

Identifier persistence considerations:

        Persistence of the URNs in this namespace is independent of the
        mutability of the underlying documents.  A URN once assigned will
        never be reassigned to a different resource; the assignment is
        persistent and immutable. Responsibility for ensuring name
        immutability is delegated to the address owners.

Process of identifier assignment:

	The process of email address assignment varies from domain to domain
	but RFC822 guarantees that every address maps to a single conceptual
	mailbox. The person, organization or group responsible for that 
	group is responsible for the namespace rooted at that mailbox.

Process of identifier resolution:

        At this time there is no defined resolution mechanism. For the
        intended set of resources this is not a problem because they
        are abstract and not retrievable. It might be possible to use
	the email address to ask for information about the abstract 
	object but the recipient is not guaranteed to be responsive.

Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

        The case sensitivity of dates and addr-specs are defined in their
	respective specifications.

	The qualifiers are defined to be be case sensitive but a TQM
	address owner might assign all of the qualifier case variations
	of a URN to the same resource. They could mandate this definition
	namespace-wide in which case that namespace would be effectively
	case insensitive.

Conformance with URN Syntax:

        There are no additional characters reserved.

Validation mechanism:

        None.

Scope:

        Global.



-- 
 Paul Prescod  - ISOGEN Consulting Engineer speaking for only himself
 http://itrc.uwaterloo.ca/~papresco

Alabama's constitution is 100 years old, 300 pages long and has more than
600 amendments. Highlights include "Amendment 393: Amendment of Amendment
No.  351", "Validation of Laws Regulating Court Costs in Randolph County",
"Miscegenation laws", "Bingo Games in Russell County", "Suppression
of dueling".  - http://www.legislature.state.al.us/ALISHome.html

xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev@ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
(un)subscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)