Individual Submission K. Meadors, Ed. Internet-Draft Drummond Group Inc. Intended status: Informational April 26, 2010 Expires: October 28, 2010 EDI-INT Features Header draft-meadors-ediint-features-header-06 Abstract With the maturity of the EDI-INT standard of AS1, AS2 and AS3, applications and additional features are being built upon the basic secure transport functionality. These features are not necessarily supported by all EDI-INT applications and could cause potential problems with implementations. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." This Internet-Draft will expire on October 28, 2010. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2010 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 carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Meadors Expires October 28, 2010 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title April 2010 This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process. Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other than English. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. EDIINT Features Header Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Implementation and Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. EDI-INT Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 7. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Meadors Expires October 28, 2010 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title April 2010 1. Introduction EDI-INT applications provide for a secure means of payload document transport. The original intent was for transport of a single EDI or XML document. However, as AS1 [RFC3335], AS2 [RFC4130] and AS3 [RFC4823] matured, other features and application logic were implemented upon EDI-INT standards. Since these features go beyond but do not violate the basic premise of EDI-INT, a means is needed to communicate to trading partners features which are supported by the originating user agent. The EDIINT Features header indicates the capability of the user agent to support the listed feature with its trading partner without out- of-band communication and agreement. 1.1. Requirements Language The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. 2. EDIINT Features Header Syntax The EDIINT Features header can appear in the header section of an AS1, AS2 and AS3 message. Its BNF syntax is listed below. Feature = "EDIINT-Features: " Feature-Name *("," Feature-Name) Feature-Name = Feature-Token Feature-Token = %d48-57 / ; 0-9 %d65-90 / ; A-Z %d97-122 / ; a-z "-" ; blank space " " is not allowed The Feature-Token allows for feature names to be specified and can only contain alphanumeric characters along with the hyphen. Feature names are case-insensitive. 3. Implementation and Processing The EDIINT Features header indicates the originating user agent is capable of supporting the features listed. The feature header MUST be present in all messages transmitted by the user agent and not just messages which utilize the feature. Upon examination of the feature Meadors Expires October 28, 2010 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title April 2010 header, the trading partner SHOULD assume the user agent is capable of receiving messages utilizing any of the features listed. The features listed MUST be supported by existing IETF RFC or RFC- track Internet-draft standards. These standards MUST describe the feature name which is listed in the header and the means which it should be used. 4. EDI-INT Applications Since AS1 uses email and the EDIINT Features header is not a registered header with IANA, the header MUST be preceded by a "X-" to be used. If the receiving trading partner does not support EDIINT Features, it can choose to ignore the header because of the "X-". Because AS2 and AS3 utilize transports of HTTP and FTP, respectively, which allow the application to ignore headers which it does not recognize, the addition of the EDIINT Features header in AS2 and AS3 can be done without affecting trading partners who have not implemented the header. AS2 and AS3 applications currently use a version header, AS2-Version and AS3-Version, respectively, to indicate functional support. The EDIINT Features header tremendously improves the purpose and function of the old version header. However, to provide a connection from the old version header and the EDIINT Features header, AS2 and AS3 applications which implement the EDIINT Features header MUST use the version value of "1.2" to indicate the support of the Feature header. Also, since version "1.1" indicates the implementation supports compression [RFC5402] and "1.2" builds upon "1.1", AS2-Version or AS3-Version of "1.2" MUST support compression regardless of whether it is mentioned as a feature in the EDIINT Features header. 5. IANA Considerations This memo includes no request to IANA. 6. Security Considerations Because headers are often un-encrypted, it may be possible for the feature header to be altered. Trading partners MAY consult out-of- band to confirm feature support. Meadors Expires October 28, 2010 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Abbreviated Title April 2010 7. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [RFC3335] Harding, T., Drummond, R., and C. Shih, "MIME-based Secure Peer-to-Peer Business Data Interchange over the Internet", RFC 3335, September 2002. [RFC4130] Moberg, D. and R. Drummond, "MIME-Based Secure Peer-to- Peer Business Data Interchange Using HTTP, Applicability Statement 2 (AS2)", RFC 4130, July 2005. [RFC4823] Harding, T. and R. Scott, "FTP Transport for Secure Peer- to-Peer Business Data Interchange over the Internet", RFC 4823, April 2007. [RFC5402] Harding, T., "Compressed Data within an Internet Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) Message", RFC 5402, February 2010. Author's Address Kyle Meadors (editor) Drummond Group Inc. Franklin, Tennessee 37069 US Phone: +1 (817) 709-1627 Email: kyle@drummondgroup.com Meadors Expires October 28, 2010 [Page 5]