Network Working Group K. Best Request for Comments: 3121 OASIS, Inc. Category: Informational N. Walsh Sun Microsystems, Inc. June 2001
A URN Namespace for OASIS
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This document describes a URN (Uniform Resource Name) namespace that is engineered by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) for naming persistent resources published by OASIS (such as OASIS Standards, XML (Extensible Markup Language) Document Type Definitions, XML Schemas, Namespaces, Stylesheets, and other documents).
The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) produces many kinds of documents: specifications, working drafts, technical resolutions, schemas, stylesheets, etc.
OASIS wishes to provide global, distributed, persistent, location- independent names for these resources.
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) requires that all resources provide a system identifier, which must be a URI, in addition to an optional public identifier (which provides an alternate mechanism for constructing identifiers) and many evolving specifications require authors to identify documents by URI alone (XML Namespaces, XML Schema, XSLT, etc.).
Motivated by these observations, OASIS would like to assign URNs to some resources in order to retain unique, permanent location- independent names for them.
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RFC 3121 A URN Namespace for OASIS June 2001
This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.
where "specification-id" is a unique identifier for the specification, "type" identifies the document type (document, schema, stylesheet, entity, xmlns, etc.), the optional "subtype" provides additional information about the document type (for example, stylesheet or schema language), and "document-id" is a unique identifier for the document.
The Director of Technical Operations at OASIS assigns document types, subtypes, and all unique identifiers.
Technical Committee Work Products
The "tc" hierarchy is for work products of OASIS Technical Committees. The general structure of the NSS in the tc hierarchy has the form:
where "tc-id" is a unique identifier for the Technical Committee, and the remaining fields are assigned as per the specification hierarchy.
Technical Papers
The "technical" hierarchy identifies legacy documents (Technical Notes, Resolutions, Memoranda, and Research Papers). The general structure of the NSS in the "technical" hierarchies has the form:
The document type is one of the following: "note", "resolution", "memorandum", or "researchpaper".
The document and amendment identifiers are derived from the legacy system for naming these documents. The document identifier consists of a two digit year and a sequential number, the amendment identifier is the year of the amendment.
The Members Hierarchy
The NSS in the members hierarchy begins with a unique member identifier assigned by OASIS. The string following the member identifier is opaque. For example:
urn:oasis:member:A00024:x
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RFC 3121 A URN Namespace for OASIS June 2001
The member identifiers will be assigned by The Director of Technical Operations at OASIS. The opaque string is defined by the owner of the branch that begins with "urn:oasis:member:{member-id}:".
Relevant ancillary documentation:
None
Identifier uniqueness considerations:
Identifier uniqueness will be enforced by the Director of Technical Operations who assigns unique identifiers to all documents identified by URN.
Identifier persistence considerations:
OASIS is committed to maintaining the accessibility and persistence of all the resources that are assigned URNs.
Process of identifier assignment:
Assignment is limited to the owner and those authorities that are specifically designated by the owner. OASIS will assign portions of its namespace (specifically, those under the members hierarchy) for assignment by other parties.
Process of identifier resolution:
The owner will distribute catalogs (OASIS TR9401 Catalogs) that map the assigned URNs to resource identifiers (e.g., URLs). A more interactive, online resolution system will also be deployed in the near future.
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.
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Validation mechanism:
None specified. The owner will publish OASIS TR9401 Catalogs. The presence of a URN in a catalog indicates that it is valid.
There are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.
References
[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.
[6] Mealling, M. and R. Daniel, "URI Resolution Services Necessary for URN Resolution", RFC 2483, January 1999.
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RFC 3121 A URN Namespace for OASIS June 2001
Authors' Addresses
Karl Best OASIS, Inc. P.O. Box 455 Billerica, MA 01821 US
EMail: karl.best@oasis-open.org
Norman Walsh Sun Microsystems, Inc. One Network Drive MS UBUR02-201 Burlington, MA 01803-0902 US
EMail: Norman.Walsh@East.Sun.COM
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RFC 3121 A URN Namespace for OASIS June 2001
Full Copyright Statement
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
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Acknowledgement
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