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Related issues

Identifiers (URIs)

XML is a specification of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and as such is designed primarily to serve Web needs.  One of the widely held tenets of Web architecture is that important things should be identified by URIs.  This has been a cause of some confusion and disagreement in IETF circles, where URIs are often perceived as a generic protocol address format.  Many of the Web technologies that build on XML also follow the principle of using URIs as generic identifiers, so in using XML technologies one has to be prepared to come to terms with URIs as generic identifiers.  XML namespaces [7]  is a prime example of this, where URIs are used to provide a unique identifier for an element-name prefix used in a protocol.

To support the effective use of XML in IETF protocols, I recommend the IESG to advance a pair of proposals prepared by Michael Mealling [8]   [9]  to provide a basis for manageable link between IETF/IANA registries and URIs used as identifies in XML data.  (My own interests here are CONNEG media feature tags, and an XML-based metadata format for email messages.)

[7] Namespaces in XML, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/ .

[8] M. Mealling, The IETF XML Registry, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mealling-iana-xmlns-registry-04.txt .

[9] M. Mealling, et al, An IETF URN Sub-namespace for Registered Protocol Parameters, http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-mealling-iana-urn-03.txt .