URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 Internet Draft M. Abel Document: draft-abel-nfc-urn-00.txt NFC Forum Expires: November 2006 May 2006 A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for The Near Field Communication Forum (NFC Forum) Status of this Memo 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. By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Abstract This document describes the Namespace Identifier (NID) for Uniform Resource Namespace (URN) resources published by the Near-Field Communication Forum (NFC Forum). The NFC Forum defines and manages resources that utilize this URN identification model. Management activities for these and other resource types are provided by the NFC Forum Technical Committee. Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 1] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 Table of Contents 1. Introduction...................................................2 2. URN specification for "nfc" NID................................2 2.1 Namespace ID:..............................................3 2.2 Registration Information:..................................3 2.3 Declared registrant of the namespace:......................3 2.4 Declaration of syntactic structure:........................3 2.5 Relevant ancillary documentation:..........................3 2.6 Identifier uniqueness considerations:......................4 2.7 Identifier persistence considerations:.....................4 2.8 Process of identifier assignment:..........................4 2.9 Process for identifier resolution:.........................5 2.10 Rules for Lexical Equivalence:............................5 2.11 Conformance with URN Syntax:..............................5 2.12 Validation mechanism:.....................................5 2.13 Scope:....................................................5 3. Examples.......................................................5 4. Namespace Considerations.......................................5 5. Community Considerations.......................................6 6. Security Considerations........................................6 7. IANA Considerations............................................6 8. References.....................................................6 8.1 Normative References.......................................6 8.2 Informative References.....................................6 Acknowledgments...................................................7 Author's Addresses................................................7 1. Introduction The NFC Forum is a specification development body developing technologies related to near-field communications. This activity is supported by a membership comprised of chip vendors, smart card vendors, equipment vendors, software developers, finance and banking service providers, content providers and other interested companies. Some of the technologies being developed by the NFC Forum need namespaces that are managed so that they are unique and persistent. To assure that the uniqueness is absolute, the registration of a specific NID for use by the NFC Forum was deemed appropriate. Therefore, a full and complete registration will follow the namespace specification process as defined in [RFC3406]. 2. URN specification for "nfc" NID Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 2] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 2.1 Namespace ID: The NID "nfc" is requested. 2.2 Registration Information: Registration version number: 1 Registration date: 2006-05-17 2.3 Declared registrant of the namespace: Registering organization Name: Near Field Communication Forum, Inc. Address: 401 Edgewater Place, Suite 600 Wakefield, MA, 01880 Designated contact Role: Technical Program Manager Email: TPM@nfc-forum.org 2.4 Declaration of syntactic structure: The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs that use the "nfc" NID will have the following structure: urn:nfc:{NFCresource}:{ResourceSpecificString} Where the "{NFCresource}" is a US-ASCII string that conforms to the URN syntax requirements [RFC2141] and defines a specific class of resource. Each resource class has a specific labeling scheme that is covered by "{ResourceSpecificString}" which also conforms to the naming requirements of [RFC2141]. NFC Forum working groups will manage the assignment of NFC resources and the specific registration values assigned for each resource class. The Technical Committee will coordinate creation of new resource class assignments based on community need. 2.5 Relevant ancillary documentation: The NFC Forum publishes specifications describing the use of near- field communication for interoperable exchange of information between devices in close proximity. Among these specifications are the designation of new data types, schema, XML elements and attributes, protocols, and other formally named items intended for machine parsing. Interested parties are referred to the NFC Forum web site where these publications will be made available to the community: http://www.nfc-forum.org/ Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 3] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 2.6 Identifier uniqueness considerations: The NFC Forum working groups and Technical Committee will ensure uniqueness of resource names assigned by the NFC Forum within the resource classes for which they are responsible. When authority and responsibility for assignment of names with a resource class are delegated to an external organization, commitment to adhere to the uniqueness requirements of the assigned resource names will be a pre-condition of such delegation. The structure of the NFC Forum namespace into resource classes will further ensure isolation of names in each class from names in other classes. It is anticipated that some resource classes may be open to self- assignment by any interested individual or organization. To ensure a degree of uniqueness for these self-assigned resource names, fully- qualified domain names will be factored into the name to distinguish the naming authorities. It should be understood that due to the flexibility of the domain names system and the underlying market-based forces that allow for ownership transfer and abandonment of domain names, no guarantee of long-term uniqueness or persistence can be made for this class of resource names beyond that made for the domain names themselves. 2.7 Identifier persistence considerations: The NFC Forum will not reassign names and will thus guarantee the persistence of names beyond the expected lifetime of the named resource. NFC Forum does not anticipate operating a name resolution service for the assigned names and does not anticipate any other usability issues of the assigned names beyond those for any other naturally aging technology. 2.8 Process of identifier assignment: The NFC Forum will provide procedures for registration of each class of resource that it maintains. Each such resource may have three types of registration activities: 1) Registered names associated with NFC Forum specifications or services; 2) Registration of names or resource classes for other entities; 3) Name models for use in experimental purposes. Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 4] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 2.9 Process for identifier resolution: The namespace is not listed with an RDS; this is not relevant. 2.10 Rules for Lexical Equivalence: No special considerations, the rules for lexical equivalence of [RFC2141] apply. 2.11 Conformance with URN Syntax: No special considerations. 2.12 Validation mechanism: None specified. URN assignment and registration will be handled by procedures implemented in support of NFC Forum activities. 2.13 Scope: Global 3. Examples The following examples are representative URNs that could be assigned by the NFC Forum. They may not be the actual strings that would be assigned: urn:nfc:wkt:Uri Defines the well-known type identifier used to identify URI bookmark data objects defined by the NFC Forum and exchanged by NFC devices. urn:nfc:schema:manifest Declares an XML namespace for elements and attributes, used in an XML schema to describe an NFC Forum data transfer manifest. 4. Namespace Considerations The NFC Forum is developing a variety of communication protocol and data exchange specifications. Some of these specifications depend upon supporting information (e.g. data descriptions, attributes, schema, etc.) to be fully specified. For proper operation, descriptions of the needed supporting information must exist and be available in a unique, reliable and persistent manner. These dependencies provide the basis of need for namespaces, in one form or another. Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 5] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 As type information is relayed across NFC Forum protocols, the need for compact, machine parsed type identification of data and meta- content, with the attributes of uniqueness and reliability mentioned above, becomes imperative for proper interoperation across widely varied implementations. As the NFC Forum work is ongoing and covers many technical areas, the possibility of using various other namespace repositories has been deemed impractical. Each data object, description, or schema as defined in the NFC Forum, could possibly be related to multiple different other namespaces so further conflicts of association might occur. Thus the intent is to utilize the requested URN namespace to manage NFC Forum defined objects, descriptions, and schema. 5. Community Considerations The objects and descriptions required for specifications produced and published by the NFC Forum are generally available for use by other organizations. The NFC Forum will provide access and support for name requests by these external organizations. This support can be enabled in timely and responsive fashion as new objects and descriptions are produced. 6. Security Considerations There are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general. 7. IANA Considerations The objective of this registration is for the requested NID to be entered into the IANA registry for URN NIDs. This would result in an update to http://www.iana.org/assignments/urn-namespaces and any associated mirrors. 8. References 8.1 Normative References As this registration request is an informative document, there are no normative references. 8.2 Informative References [RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997. [RFC3406] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R. and P. Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002. Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 6] URN Namespace for the NFC Forum May 2006 Acknowledgments The author wishes to express thanks to Dwight Smith (Motorola) for his guidance on the urn registration process and for providing, by example, a registration that was worthy of emulation. Author's Addresses Miller Abel Role: Technical Committee Delegate, NFC Forum Address: Microsoft Corporation One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 Email: TPM@nfc-forum.org Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2006). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. This document and the information contained herein are provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM 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. Abel Expires - November 2006 [Page 7]