A URN Namespace for the Open Grid Forum (OGF)
draft-dijkstra-urn-ogf-01

Abstract

This document describes a URN (Uniform Resource Name) namespace that is engineered by the Open Grid Forum (OGF) for naming persistent resources.

Status of this Memo

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Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

1.  Introduction
    1.1.  Requirements Language
2.  URN Specification for "ogf" NID
    2.1.  Namespace ID
    2.2.  Registration Information
    2.3.  Declared registrant of the namespace
    2.4.  Declaration of syntactic structure
    2.5.  Relevant ancillary documentation
    2.6.  Identifier uniqueness considerations
    2.7.  Identifier persistence considerations
    2.8.  Process of identifier assignment
    2.9.  Process of identifier resolution
    2.10.  Rules for Lexical Equivalence
    2.11.  Conformance with URN Syntax
    2.12.  Validation mechanism
    2.13.  Scope
3.  Examples (Informative)
4.  Namespace Considerations
5.  Community Considerations
6.  Security Considerations
7.  IANA Considerations
8.  Acknowledgements
9.  References
    9.1.  Normative References
    9.2.  Informative References
§  Authors' Addresses

1.  Introduction

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development organisation in the field of distributed computing. The OGF produces documents such as working drafts, specifications, and schemata. For more information, see http://www.ogf.org/

Working groups in the OGF community have expressed the need for global, distributed, persistent identifiers in working drafts and standards. Motivated by this need, the OGF would like to assign URNs to some resources in order to retain unique, permanent, location-independent names for them.

This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

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 [RFC2119] (Bradner, S., “Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels,” March 1997.).

2.  URN Specification for "ogf" NID

2.1.  Namespace ID

"ogf" requested.

2.2.  Registration Information

Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: yyyy-mm-dd [RFC-Editor] (Please replace with the date of approval of this document for publication as an RFC)

2.3.  Declared registrant of the namespace

Technical Director
Open Grid Forum
P.O. Box 2326
Joliet, Illinois 60434
USA
http://www.ogf.org/
Email: urn@ogf.org

The position of technical director is currently fulfilled by Joel Replogle.

2.4.  Declaration of syntactic structure

The formal syntax definitions below are given in ABNF (Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” January 2008.) [RFC5234].

The NSS in the urn:ogf names hierarchy begins with a topic identifier, followed by a delimiter and a topic-dependent string

   OGF-URN  =  "urn:ogf:" TOPIC-ID ":" TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING

where TOPIC-ID is a unique topic identifier for the specification, and TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING is a unique identifier within the topic identifier scope.

TOPIC-ID has the same syntax as a <NID> as defined in [RFC2141] (Moats, R., “URN Syntax,” May 1997.):

   TOPIC-ID  =  ( ALPHA / DIGIT )  *31( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" )

ALPHA and DIGIT are defined in Appendix B of [RFC5234] (Crocker, D. and P. Overell, “Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF,” January 2008.).

The Technical Director at OGF (or it successor) assigns topic identifiers.

The syntax of TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING is dependent on the TOPIC-ID, and MUST be defined by a Grid Forum Document (Open Grid Forum, “OGF Document Series,” .) [GFD‑SERIES]. This document does not pose any additional restrictions to the TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING other than what is defined in the NSS syntax as defined by [RFC2141] (Moats, R., “URN Syntax,” May 1997.) or its successor:

   TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING  =  1*<URN chars>

<URN chars> is defined in Section 2.2 of [RFC2141] (Moats, R., “URN Syntax,” May 1997.).

2.5.  Relevant ancillary documentation

The Technical Director at OGF (or it successor) will keep a list of assigned topic identifiers and associated documentation at http://www.ogf.org/urn/ [URN‑OGF] (Open Grid Forum, “URN:OGF Hierarchy Registry and Documentation,” .).

Information on the procedures how to register an topic identifier can also be found at this website.

2.6.  Identifier uniqueness considerations

Identifier uniqueness will be enforced by the Technical Director of the Open Grid Forum.

2.7.  Identifier persistence considerations

The Technical Director will only assign topic identifiers for persistent resources.

2.8.  Process of identifier assignment

Assignment of topic identifiers is limited to the OGF and those authorities that are specifically designated by the OGF Technical Director. OGF may assign portions of its namespace (specifically, those under designated topic identifiers) for assignment by third parties.

The details of this process will be specified at the OGF website [URN‑OGF] (Open Grid Forum, “URN:OGF Hierarchy Registry and Documentation,” .).

The syntax and semantics of each TOPIC-ID MUST be defined by a Grid Forum Document (Open Grid Forum, “OGF Document Series,” .) [GFD‑SERIES] before it is assigned.

2.9.  Process of identifier resolution

OGF will maintain an index of all topic identifiers on its Web site, http://www.ogf.org/urn/.

Resolution mechanism of TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING within each TOPIC-ID MUST be defined before assignment of a topic identifier.

2.10.  Rules for Lexical Equivalence

The TOPIC-ID part of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is case insensitive. Thus, the TOPIC-ID MUST be case normalised before comparison.

The rules for lexical equivalence of the TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING part of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is specific for each TOPIC-ID and MUST be defined when a TOPIC-ID is assigned by the OGF Technical Director. These definitions MUST included information about case sensitivity, and in case %-escaped octets, MUST define the exact normalisation to use (e.g. interpret as octet, interpret as UTF-8, specify type of Unicode normalisation factor, etc.)

2.11.  Conformance with URN Syntax

At the moment of writing, a revision of RFC2141 is proposed, which may allow a different set of allowed characters (URN-char) in the NSS than the current URN chars (adding "&" and/or "~", whilst removing the reserved characters "%", "/", "?" and "#"). The intention of this document is to only restrict the syntax of the TOPIC-ID, and have Grid Forum Documents specify the syntax of the TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING. If RFC 2141 is to be updated, this document may be revised as well.

In other words, the current definition:

   TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING  =  1*<URN chars>

is likely to change in the future to:

   TOPIC-SPECIFIC-STRING  =  1*<URN-char>

It is RECOMMENDED that OGF URN strings be chosen in characters acceptable by both RFC2141 and the expected revision.

2.12.  Validation mechanism

The validation mechanism of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is specific for each TOPIC-ID and MUST be defined when a TOPIC-ID is assigned by the OGF Technical Director.

URNs in the OGF hierarchy without an assigned TOPIC-ID are considered to be invalid.

2.13.  Scope

Global URNs, relevant for the distributed computing community in general, and the Open Grid Forum in particular.

3.  Examples (Informative)

Since no topic identifiers have been defined yet, no actual examples can be given. Therefor, the following examples are not guaranteed to be real or even syntactically correct.

Grid forum documents defining the "gfd" and "network" topic identifiers may give the following examples.

• urn:ogf:gfd:136
• urn:ogf:network:canarie.ca:kisti-uninett-glif-001

4.  Namespace Considerations

The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development organisation in the field of distributed computing.

The use of the OGF hierarchy is expected to be broad, including but not limit to usage for:

• Grid Forum Documents
• XML (Extensible Markup Language) Schemata
• RDF (Resource Description Framework) Schemata

The Open Grid Forum is dedicated to openly publish all technical documentation related to URNs in the OGF hierarchy and allow unlimited distribution of this documentation.

5.  Community Considerations

Members of the distributed computing community will benefit from persistent and globally unique identifiers for use in protocols developed by the Open Grid Forum.

Practical use of the urn:ogf namespace has been detected, and a formal registration will allow the Open Grid Forum to document this usage and enforce technical review of current practices.

6.  Security Considerations

There are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.

Implementors are recommended to check the OGF registry and documentation [URN‑OGF] (Open Grid Forum, “URN:OGF Hierarchy Registry and Documentation,” .) before assuming that a given identifier is valid or has a certain meaning.

7.  IANA Considerations

IANA is to kindly requested to register the "ogf" namespace identifier (NID) at the URN Namespaces registry (IANA, “Official IANA Registry of URN Namespaces,” .) [URN‑NAMESPACES] and refer to this document and/or the website http://www.ogf.org/urn/.

8.  Acknowledgements

The authors like to thank Joel Replogle and Andre Mersky for helping set up the urn:ogf registry. The template and useful examples from [RFC3406] (Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom, “Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition Mechanisms,” October 2002.) formed the basis for this document.

9.  References

9.1. Normative References

9.2. Informative References

Authors' Addresses