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. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on January 2, 2018. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License. Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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" Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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 Declaration of structure: Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs that use the "mrn" NID shall have the following structure: ::= "urn:mrn:" ":" ::= 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT) ; Organization ID ::= ":" ; Organization-specific string ::= 1*(ALPHA / DIGIT / "-") ; Organization-specific namespace ID ::= 1* ; 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 * indicates that the following term or group can repeat at least and at most times; default values are 0 and infinity, respectively ; comment 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 . 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 Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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. Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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. Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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 :. For example: urn:mrn:iala:aton:us:1234x5 Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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. Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Maritime Resource Names (MRN) July 2017 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, . [RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, DOI 10.17487/RFC2141, May 1997, . [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, . [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, . Author's Address Kasper Nielsen Danish Maritime Authority Carl Jacobsens Vej 31 2500 Valby Denmark Email: kasperni@gmail.com Nielsen Expires January 2, 2018 [Page 9]