vCard KIND:thing
draft-saintandre-vcarddav-thing-01

Abstract

This document defines a value of "thing" for the vCard KIND property so that vCards can be used to represent physical objects and software applications.

Status of this Memo

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This Internet-Draft will expire on November 14, 2011.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.

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Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Meaning
• 3. Example
• 4. IANA Considerations
• 5. Security Considerations
• 6. References
• 6.1. Normative References
• 6.2. Informative References
• Author's Address

1. Introduction

Version 4 of the vCard specification [VCARD] defines a new KIND property for the type of entity that a vCard represents. The "thing" value of the KIND property was removed from that specification, with the expectation it might be defined in a vCard extension. This document defines such an extension so that vCards can be used to represent things like physical objects and software applications.

2. Meaning

When the KIND property has a value of "thing", the vCard represents a physical object (e.g., a building, a vehicle, or a machine) or a software application (e.g., an application server, client, or bot). As one example of the "thing" KIND, vCards are currently used in the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol [XMPP] to represent instant messaging servers that are deployed on the network.

Although it might be desirable to define a more fine-grained taxonomy of things (e.g., a KIND of "thing" with a subtype of "vehicle"), such a taxonomy is out of scope for this document.

The following base properties make sense for vCards that represent things (this list is not exhaustive, and other properties might be applicable as well):

• ADR
• EMAIL
• FN
• GEO
• IMPP
• KEY
• KIND
• LANG
• LOGO
• NOTE
• ORG
• PHOTO
• REV
• SOURCE
• TEL
• TZ
• URL

Because things do not have work places and personal lives, it makes no sense to use the "work" and "home" values of the TYPE parameter in a thing's vCard (see Section 5.6 of [VCARD]).

The properties in a thing's vCard apply to one of the following:

• The thing itself (e.g., the FN property might represent the friendly name of an application service, the URL property might represent a website that contains further information about the service, and the ADR, GEO, and TZ properties might represent the physical address, geographical location, and timezone of the machine where the service is hosted).
  
  
• An organization or person that owns the thing (e.g., the LOGO property might represent the corporate logo of a service provider).
  
  
• A person or role that controls the thing (e.g., the TEL, EMAIL, and IMPP properties might represent ways to contact a server administrator).

3. Example

The following example of an XMPP server is borrowed from [XMPP-VCARD] and uses the XML representation of vCard described in [VCARDXML].

<vcard xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:vcard-4.0"> 
  <fn><text>jabber.org IM service</text></fn>
  <url><uri>http://www.jabber.org/</uri></url>
  <lang>
    <parameters><pref>1</pref></parameters>
    <language-tag>en</language-tag>
  </lang>
  <email><text>xmpp@jabber.org</text></email>
  <impp><uri>xmpp:jabber.org</uri></impp>
  <logo><uri>http://www.jabber.org/images/logo.png</uri></logo>
  <geo><uri>geo:42.25,-91.05</uri></geo>
  <tz><text>America/Chicago</text></tz>
  <source><uri>xmpp:jabber.org?vcard</uri></source>
  <rev><timestamp>19990104T122100Z</timestamp></rev>
  <kind><text>thing</text></kind>
</vcard>
        

4. IANA Considerations

The IANA is requested to add "thing" to the registry of property values for vCard4. In conformance with Section 10.2.6 of [VCARD], the registration is as follows, where the reference is to RFCXXXX.

Value:

thing

Purpose:

The entity represented by the vCard is a physical object (e.g., a building, a vehicle, or a machine) or a software application (e.g., an application server, client, or bot).

Conformance:

This value can be used with the "KIND" property.

Example:

See Section 3 of RFCXXXX.

5. Security Considerations

Use of vCards to represent physical objects and software applications is not envisioned to introduce security considerations beyond those specified for vCards in [VCARD].

6. References

6.1. Normative References

6.2. Informative References

Author's Address