Internet DRAFT - draft-knielsen-mrn-urn
draft-knielsen-mrn-urn
Network Working Group K. Nielsen
Internet-Draft Danish Maritime Authority
Intended status: Informational July 1, 2017
Expires: January 2, 2018
Maritime Resource Names (MRN)
draft-knielsen-mrn-urn-02
Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for
persistently and uniquely naming maritime resources published by the
International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse
Authorities (IALA AISM).
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 2, 2018.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Specification Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. Namespace Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Community Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
The International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and
Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) is a non-profit, international
technical association in the field of marine aids to navigation.
Founded in 1957, IALA gathers together authorities, manufacturers,
consultants, and scientific and training institutes from all over the
world, offering them the opportunity to exchange and compare their
experiences and achievements.
Many standardized identification schemes exist for vessels, buoys,
mariners and other maritime resources already, but there is no single
system that allows people to specify such an identifier in a uniform
and unambiguous way. We believe that it makes sense to introduce a
naming scheme that can uniquely identify any maritime resource on a
global scale.
A "maritime resource" can be anything that has an identity, including
organizations, employees, people, physical objects, virtual objects
(such as electronic documents), buoys, ships, mariners, nautical
charts and electronic services (e.g., "today's weather report for the
Oresund Strait"). Of course, not all resources are "retrievable" in
an electronic sense; human beings, corporations, and buoys would be
obvious examples. However, all of these can still be considered
resources.
Having a uniform naming scheme will pave the way for new maritime
digital information services, facilitating innovation, integration,
trade, safety, and security in the maritime sector. This document
defines such a naming system based on Uniform Resource Names (URNs).
2. Specification Template
Namespace ID
"mrn"
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Registration Information
Registration version number: 1
Registration date: 2017-xx-xx
Declared Registrant of the Namespace
Registering organization:
International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and
Lighthouse Authorities (IALA)
10 rue des Gaudines
78100
St Germain en Laye
France
Email: contact@iala-aism.org
Designated Contact:
International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and
Lighthouse Authorities (IALA)
Email: info@mrnregistry.org
<http://www.mrnregistry.org/>
Declaration of structure:
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The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs that use the
"mrn" NID shall have the following structure:
<URN> ::= "urn:mrn:" <OID> ":" <OSS>
<OID> ::= 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT) ; Organization ID
<OSS> ::= <OSNID> ":" <OSNS> ; Organization-specific string
<OSNID> ::= 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-")
; Organization-specific namespace ID
<OSNS> ::= 1*<URN chars> ; Organization-specific namespace string
DIGIT ::= %x30-39 ; 0-9
ALPHA ::= %x61-7A ; a-z
Basics of the ABNF notation used:
" " literals (terminal character strings); terms not in quotes are
non-terminals
/ alternatives
() indicates a sequence group, used as a single alternative or as a
single repeating group
<a>*<b> indicates that the following term or group can repeat at
least <a> and at most <b> times; default values are 0 and
infinity, respectively
; comment
<URN chars> As defined in [@!RFC2141]
Relevant ancillary documentation:
The process for assigning unique organizational IDs is managed by
IALA. Details and application process can be found at
<http://www.mrnregistry.org>.
Identifier uniqueness considerations:
Guaranteeing uniqueness is a two-way process. First, IALA will
guarantee that each organization is assigned a unique organization
id that will never be reused. Second, each organization must
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guarantee that they do not assign duplicate organization-specific
strings (OSS).
Identifier persistence considerations:
Each individual organization must guarantee that assigned URNs
will not be reused and will remain valid beyond the lifecycle of
the referenced resources. However, although the URNs remain
valid, the status of the referenced resource may change.
Process of identifier assignment:
The assignment of OIDs for each organization is managed by IALA.
The assignment of organization-specific namespace IDs and strings
is fully managed by each individual organization.
Process of identifier resolution:
There are no plans to provide a generally available resolution
mechanism. However, organizations are free to setup resolution
servers for all or part of the URNs assigned under their
organization id.
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
The entire URN is case insensitive.
Conformity with URN syntax:
There are no additional characters reserved except as noted in the
ABNF above.
Validation mechanism:
Each sub-namespace will have namespace-specific rules for
determining validity. There are no plans to provide a central
repository for these rules.
Scope:
Global.
3. Examples
All the examples provided in this section are hypothetical. Real
world naming schemes will most likely look different.
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Using the MRN identifier scheme, a vessel with an IMO number of
9743368 could be identified as follows:
urn:mrn:imo:imo-number:9743368
The governing organization that assigns IMO numbers is the
International Maritime Organization (IMO). IMO may delegate the
actual assignment of numbers to another organization, but it is still
the organization that determines that an IMO number is unique.
Within the context of maritime resource names, the organization ID
(OID) refers to the organization that governs the syntax and rules of
a particular resource type. In the example above, the organization
ID is "imo".
Each organization further divides the organization-specific string
(OSS), which is the part following "imo", into two parts.
The first part is an organization-specific namespace ID (OSNID),
which is a unique identifier within the governing organization for a
particular type of resource. In this example, we have used "imo-
number," but this could just as well have been "imonumber" or even
simply "number".
The second part is the organization-specific namespace string (OSNS).
This is the only part that differs for resources of the same type; in
this case it is "9743368". The organization-specific namespace
string is, as the name implies, specific to a particular combination
of OID and OSNID. In this case, the organization-specific namespace
string is always a 7-digit IMO number.
Another way to identify the same vessel might be to use its MMSI
number. Here the identifier could look like this:
urn:mrn:itu:mmsi:538070999
In this case ITU is the governing body because MMSI numbers are based
on ITU recommendation M.585. It is possible that national bodies
might do the actual assignment of MMSI numbers, but ITU is the
governing body for the standardization of MMSI numbers.
These two examples show how multiple identities can identify the same
entity; in this case, the same vessel can be identified by either an
IMO number or MMSI number. This is similar to how an individual
might be identified either by a driver license number or a social
security ID. Note that some parameters that are frequently used for
identification, such as human names, do not generally qualify as
identifiers because they are not guaranteed to be unique. A single
identifier must refer to one and only one entity.
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URNs range from very coarse-grained to very fine-grained. For
example, a container ship might be identified by one of the two
previous URNs. The containers aboard the ship might be identified
with an URN adapting the ISO 6346 identifier scheme for container
ids.
urn:mrn:bic:container-id:csqu3054383
Finally, individual items in a single container might be identified
by another URN scheme. It might even be possible to integrate with
URNs defined outside of the urn:mrn namespace. For example, all
items in a container might be identified by an electronic product
code ([RFC5134]). In other words, the use of URNs as identifiers is
not limited to those defined within this document. In the future,
other non-maritime sectors might even adopt similar naming schemes
based on URNs to facilitate easier integration across sector
boundaries.
As mentioned earlier, an identifier does not need to be a physical
object; it can be a virtual item such as an electronic document. For
example, IMO might decide that all of their documents should use a
"publications" prefix. The publication "IMO SOLAS Consolidated
Spanish Edition, 2014 IF110S" might be referred to as:
urn:mrn:imo:publications:if110s
On the other hand, an organization such as IALA might decide that
their publications should follow another format where the category of
the publication is included in the identifier. For example, a
recommendation could be:
urn:mrn:iala:publications:recommendation:e-nav-140
The identifier of a guideline might be written as:
urn:mrn:iala:publications:guideline:synchronisation-of-lights-1069
As can be seen from the previous example, the organization-specific
namespace string can be split into multiple hierarchies. The
governing organization can decide how it wants to structure its
identifiers.
Another example of identifiers with multiple hierarchies could be
seen in an identifier scheme for lights and buoys. Here IALA could
choose to let the OSNS consist of <CountryCode>:<National
Identifier>. For example:
urn:mrn:iala:aton:us:1234x5
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There are no requirements that organizations be permanent entities.
For example, the European STM Validation Project could choose to use
"stm" as its organization ID. A voyage ID in this project might look
like this:
urn:mrn:stm:voyage:id:xcus231230
Within the project, the group may use "xcus231230" to refer to a
voyage plan. However, the full URN can be used when working with
external systems or other projects, in case another type of
identifier is also used for a particular voyage.
As can be seen from all of these examples, the scheme is highly
adaptable. Each organization can choose its own layout for a
specific type of identifier. It is easy to fit existing identifiers
into the naming scheme, and it provides good context information
about the type of the identifier, unlike something simple such as a
random UUID.
4. Namespace Considerations
IALA traditionally addresses the maritime community, but its
resources are made available to all interested parties. URN
namespaces can exist for any generic naming system that needs to be
encoded. It is the goal of IALA to foster a community around
maritime resource names within the global maritime community.
Therefore, binding to various other namespace repositories has been
deemed impractical.
5. Community Considerations
Members of the IALA community will benefit from persistent and
globally unique identifiers for use in software and in conformance
with protocols developed and used by IALA and third-party
collaborators.
Organizations will generally be free to structure their organization-
specific namespaces in any way they see fit, as long as they
guarantee uniqueness and persistence. However, it is our intention
to also provide general guidelines and best practices in the future.
One example would be encouraging every organization to use
"publications" as the organization-specific namespace ID for their
official publications. Another might be that every identifier that
refers to a country use standards available in ISO 3166 for the
representation of the names of countries and their subdivisions.
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6. Security Considerations
There are no additional security considerations other than those
normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs, as described
in [RFC1737], [RFC2141], and [RFC3406].
7. IANA Considerations
This document defines a URN NID registration that is to be entered
into the IANA registry of URN NIDs. It specifically requests the MRN
NID.
8. Normative References
[RFC1737] Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, DOI 10.17487/RFC1737,
December 1994, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1737>.
[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, DOI 10.17487/RFC2141,
May 1997, <http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2141>.
[RFC3406] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom,
"Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition
Mechanisms", RFC 3406, DOI 10.17487/RFC3406, October 2002,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3406>.
[RFC5134] Mealling, M., "A Uniform Resource Name Namespace for the
EPCglobal Electronic Product Code (EPC) and Related
Standards", RFC 5134, DOI 10.17487/RFC5134, January 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5134>.
Author's Address
Kasper Nielsen
Danish Maritime Authority
Carl Jacobsens Vej 31
2500 Valby
Denmark
Email: kasperni@gmail.com
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