Network Working Group P. Stickler Internet-Draft Nokia Research Center Expires: September 5, 2002 March 7, 2002 The 'uri:' URI Scheme for URI Reification draft-pstickler-uri-01 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 September 5, 2002. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This document describes the 'uri:' Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for the reification of arbitrary Uniform Resource Identifiers. Stickler Expires September 5, 2002 [Page 1] Internet-Draft The 'uri:' URI Scheme March 2002 Table of Contents 1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. BNF for the 'uri:' URI Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Stickler Expires September 5, 2002 [Page 2] Internet-Draft The 'uri:' URI Scheme March 2002 1. Overview The 'uri:' URI scheme is intended to provide a simple but consistent means by which URIs (including URI References) may be reified for the sake of communication between web applications about the URIs themselves rather than about the resources they may represent. The ability to differentiate between a particular URI and the web resource which that URI denotes or represents is important in cases where we need to make statements about the history, nature, or other characteristics of the URI itself which are not properties of the resource which it represents -- such as when the URI was minted, by whom, and the class of URI to which it belongs. Examples: uri:http://www.nokia.com uri:mailto:patrick.stickler@nokia.com uri:http://www.abc.com/employees%23Bob uri:uuid:f81d4fae-7dec-11d0-a765-00a0c91e6bf6 uri:voc://nokia.com/MARS-2.2/title uri:ftp://ftp.abc.com/pub/apps/free uri:uri:http://www.nokia.com These examples are provided for illustrative purposes only and do not necessarily constitute actual URIs. See the BNF definition below for an explicit definition of 'uri:' URI syntax. Note that this mechanism of reification is infinitely recursive, allowing instances of this URI scheme to themselves be reified by additional encapsulation, as the final example above illustrates. Clearly, the utility of such recursion diminishes greatly with each level of encapsulation, but the absence of a finite boundary ensures that all possible URIs, including instances of this URI scheme, can be reified as needed. 2. BNF for the 'uri:' URI Scheme This is a BNF-like description of the 'uri:' Uniform Resource Identifier syntax, using the conventions of RFC 822[1], except that "|" is used to designate alternatives, and brackets [] are used around optional or repeated elements. Briefly, literals are quoted with "", optional elements are enclosed in [brackets], and elements may be preceded with * to designate n or more repetitions of the following element; n defaults to 0. This BNF description adopts sub-definitions defined in RFC 2396 "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax" [2] which are Stickler Expires September 5, 2002 [Page 3] Internet-Draft The 'uri:' URI Scheme March 2002 not repeated here. uri-URI = "uri:" absoluteURI [ "%23" fragment ] absoluteURI = fragment = Note that the URI scheme prefix "uri:" is considered to be a valid URI denoting this URI scheme, though it is not itself a valid URI according to this URI scheme. 3. Security Considerations This document raises no known security issues. References [1] Crocker, D., "STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES", RFC 822, August 1982. [2] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998. Author's Address Patrick Stickler Nokia Research Center Visiokatu 1 Tampere 33720 FI EMail: patrick.stickler@nokia.com Stickler Expires September 5, 2002 [Page 4] Internet-Draft The 'uri:' URI Scheme March 2002 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). 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. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Stickler Expires September 5, 2002 [Page 5]