Network Working Group M. Mealling Internet-Draft VeriSign, Inc. Expires: May 22, 2002 November 21, 2001 The IETF XML Registry draft-mealling-iana-xmlns-registry-03.txt 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 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on May 22, 2002. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes an IANA maintained registry for IETF standards which use XML related items such as Namespaces, DTD, Schemas, and RDF Schemas. 1. Introduction Over the past few years XML [2] has become a widely used method for data markup. There have already been several IETF Working Groups that have produced standards that define XML DTDs, XML Namespaces [3] and XML Schemas [4]. Each one of these technologies uses URIs [1] to identify their respective objects. For example, a given XML document defines its DTD using the DOCTYPE element. This element, like SGML, Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 1] Internet-Draft The IETF XML Registry November 2001 has a PUBLIC and a SYSTEM identifier. It is standard practice within W3C standards to forego the use of the PUBLIC identifier in favor of 'well known' SYSTEM identifiers. There have been several IETF standards that have simply created non-existent URIs in order to simply identify but not resolve the SYSTEM identifier for some given XML document. This document seeks to standardize this practice by creating an IANA maintained registry of XML elements so that document authors and implementors have a well maintained and authoritative location for their XML elements. As part of this standard, the IANA will both house the public representation of the document and either include the URI given by the registrant or assign it a Uniform Resource Name that can be used as the URI in any URI based identification components of XML. 2. Registerable Documents 2.1 The Assigned/Registered URI All elements in this registry will require a URI in order to be registered. If the registrant wishes to have a URI assigned then a URN of the form: urn:ietf:params:xml:: will be assigned where is the type of the document being registered (see below). is a unique id generated by the IANA based on any means the IANA deems necessary to maintain uniqueness and persistence. NOTE: in order for a URN of this type to be assigned, the item being registered MUST have been through the IETF concensus process. Practically this means it must be documented in an RFC. The RFC XXXX [6] URN registration template is found in Section 4. The IANA will also maintain a file server available via at least HTTP and FTP that contains all of the registered elements in some publicly accessible file space (in the same way that all of the IANA's registered elements are available via http://www.iana.org/assignments/). While the directory structure of this server is up to the IANA, it is suggested that the files be organized by the and the individual files have the as their filename. 2.2 Document Types The list of types of XML documents that can be registered with the Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 2] Internet-Draft The IETF XML Registry November 2001 IANA are: dtd -- An XML document that contains a DOCTYPE element can identify its DTD via both a PUBLIC identifier and a SYSTEM identifier. The URN assigned by the IANA can be used as the value of the SYSTEM identifier. ns -- XML Namespaces [3]are named by a URI. They have no real, machine-parseable representation other than the specifications that define them. Thus the element registered will be the specification (or a pointer to it). The URN assigned by the IANA will be the XML Namespace's name. schema -- XML Schemas [4] are also identified by a URI but their contents are machine parseable. The IANA registered document will be the XML Schema file. The URN the IANA assigns can be used as the URI for the schema. rdfschema -- The Resource Description Format (RDF) [5] is an XML serialization of a connected graph based data model used for metadata expression. RDF makes use of schemas for RDF that express grammars about relationships between URIs. These grammars are identified by URIs. The URN assigned by the IANA can be used as the identifying URI. 3. Registration Procedures Until such time as the IANA requests or implements an automated process for the registration of these elements, any specifications wishing to do so must make that request part of the IANA considerations section of their respective documents. That request must be in the form of the following template: URI The URI that identifies the XML component. If the registrant is requesting that the IANA assign a URI then this field should be specified as "please assign" Registrant Contact The individual/organization that is the registration contact for the component being registered. Ideally this will be the name and pertinent physical and network contact information. XML The exact XML to be stored in the registry. Unless otherwise obvious what the beginning and end of the file are, the document should use the text "BEGIN" to mark the beginning of the file and Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 3] Internet-Draft The IETF XML Registry November 2001 "END" to mark the end of the file. The IANA will insert any text between those two strings (minus any page breaks and RFC formatting inserted by the RFC Editor) into the file kept in the repository. 4. IANA Considerations This documents seeks to create a rather large registry for which the IANA (at the direction of the IESG) will be primarily responsible. The amount of effort required to maintain this registry is not insignificant and the policies and procedures surrounding any approval process are non-trivial. The registry is on a First Come First Served basis but at this time a Specification is Required. Once the IETF has some experience with this registry these policies may change. RFC XXXX [6] specifies that any new registry that requires a name to be assigned below the 'urn:ietf:params' namespace must specify the structure of that space in template form. The IANA is directed to create and maintain this new sub-namespace: Registry-name: xml Specification: This document contains the registry specification. The namespace is organized with one sub-namespace which is the . Repository: To be assigned according to the guidelines found above. Index value: The class name References [1] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. [2] WorldWideWeb Consortium, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition)", W3C Recommendation, October 2000, . [3] WorldWideWeb Consortium, "Namespaces in XML", W3C Recommendation, January 1999, . [4] WorldWideWeb Consortium, "XML Schema Part 0: Primer", W3C Recommendation, May 2001, . Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 4] Internet-Draft The IETF XML Registry November 2001 [5] WorldWideWeb Consortium, "Resource Description Framework (RDF) Model and Syntax Specification", W3C Recommendation, February 1999, . [6] Mealling, M., Masinter, L., Hardie, T. and G. Klyne, "An IETF URN Sub-namespace for Registered Protocol Parameters", draft- mealling-iana-urn-02.txt (work in progress), August 2001. Author's Address Michael Mealling VeriSign, Inc. Mountain View, CA US URI: http://www.research.netsol.com Email: michael@neonym.net Email: michael@verisignlabs.com Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 5] Internet-Draft The IETF XML Registry November 2001 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. 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Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Mealling Expires May 22, 2002 [Page 6]