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rfc:rfc3616

Network Working Group F. Bellifemine Request for Comments: 3616 Telecom Italia Lab Category: Informational I. Constantinescu

                                                                  EPFL
                                                           S. Willmott
                                                                   UPC
                                                        September 2003
            A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for
         Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)

Status of this Memo

 This memo provides information for the Internet community.  It does
 not specify an Internet standard of any kind.  Distribution of this
 memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 This document describes a Uniform Resource Name Namespace
 Identification (URN NID) for the Foundation for Intelligent Physical
 Agents (FIPA). This URN NID will be used for identification of
 standard components published by the FIPA standards body in the area
 of Agent technology.

Table of Contents

 1.  Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
 2.  Specification Template. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  2
 3.  Namespace Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
 4.  Community Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
 5.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
 6.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
 7.  References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     7.1.  Normative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
     7.2.  Informative References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
 8.  Authors' Addresses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
 9.  Full Copyright Statement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 1] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

1. Introduction

 The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) was established
 in 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland.  FIPA is an international non-profit
 association of companies and organizations dedicated to promoting the
 industry of intelligent agents by openly developing specifications
 supporting interoperability among agents and agent-based
 applications.  The core mission of the FIPA standards consortium is
 to facilitate the interworking of agents and agent systems across
 multiple vendors' platforms.  Since its inception, FIPA has counted
 more than 60 member companies from over 20 different countries
 worldwide.
 FIPA publishes technical specifications, schemas, diagrams and other
 documentation related to the area of Agent technology.  FIPA wishes
 to create and manage globally unique, persistent, location-
 independent identifiers for these resources.

2. Specification Template

 Namespace ID:
    "fipa"
 Registration Information:
    Version 1
    Date: 2002-02-28
 Declared registrant of the namespace:
    Name:           FIPA Secretariat (J. Kelly)
    E-mail:         secretariat@fipa.org
    Affiliation:    Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA)
    Address:        c/o Me Jean-Pierre Jacquemoud
                    2, rue Bellot
                    CH-1206 Geneve
 Declaration of structure:
 The identifier has a hierarchical structure as follows:
    urn:<assigned number>:{subspace-id1}:{subspace-id2}:...
    subspace-ids can be any US-ASCII string compliant with URI syntax
    and not containing the ":" character.  The subspaces are used to
    divide the assigned namespace along one or more logical schemes.

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 2] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

 Examples of such schemes are:
  • By standardization area:

urn:fipa:language:acl

 urn:fipa:ontology:management
  • By technical committee:

urn:fipa:architecture:example:directory

 urn:fipa:architecture:example:greenpolicy
 Relevant ancillary documentation:
    None.
 Identifier uniqueness considerations:
    Assignment of URNs in the requested namespace will be managed by
    the FIPA Architecture Board (FAB) which will ensure that URNs
    assigned in the requested namespace are unique.
 Identifier persistence considerations:
    FIPA is committed to maintaining the availability and persistence
    of all resources identified by assigned URNs.
 Process of identifier assignment:
    Assignment of URNs in the requested namespace will be managed by
    the FIPA Architecture Board (FAB) which is responsible for
    approval of all specifications published by FIPA.
 Process for identifier resolution:
    FIPA will maintain published lists of assigned identifiers on its
    web pages at http://www.fipa.org.
 Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
    URNs are lexically equivalent if they are lexically identical.
 Conformance with URN Syntax:
    No special considerations.
 Validation mechanism:
    None specified.

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 3] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

 Scope:
    Global.

3. Namespace Considerations

 As part of the consideration of the URN namespace issue, FIPA has
 engaged in a survey of existing and proposed URN NID schemes which
 might be used instead of applying for a dedicated scheme.  FIPA's
 specific requirements are that the namespace should be:
  1. Globally unique
  2. Persistent
  3. Location-independent
  4. Reflect the logical structure of FIPA specifications (see section

3)

  1. Be purely logical and without reference to "location" related

elements such as (in particular) domain names/Domain Name System

    (DNS) entries such as URLs
 -  Be managed by the FIPA organisation to ensure the integrity,
    correctness and uniqueness of the namespace.
 The closest to the requirements identified by FIPA were the proposed
 Vocabulary (VOC) [4] and TAG [3] schemes:
  1. In particular, TAG could be used in conjunction with the domain

name "fipa.org" which FIPA has registered to generate unique

    identifiers. However, the problems with this scheme from FIPA's
    perspective are (in order of importance):
  • It has not yet (to our knowledge) been approved / accepted by

IESG or IANA (making it inappropriate for use in a standards

       document).
  • The labels generated related to the time date, owner of the

label but specify no particular semantics for the content/text

       of the label which would be desirable to identify a hierarchy
       of standards.
  • The uniqueness in the scheme is DNS based.
  1. VOC provides a more logical structure for a logical hierarchy of

specifications but still presents the following problems:

  • It has not yet (to our knowledge) been approved / accepted by

IESG or IANA making it inappropriate for use in a standards

       document).

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 4] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

  • The uniqueness in the scheme is DNS based.
 In both cases, there is no clear authority for managing the
 correctness of the namespace.

4. Community Considerations

 FIPA standards address the area of interoperability between
 autonomous software systems (agents) in open environments such as
 company intranets or the Internet itself.  Communication between such
 systems is highly contingent on developers and the systems themselves
 being able to unambiguously identify which technology specifications
 (interaction protocols, languages, domain descriptions and the like)
 are to be used for particular purposes in any given interaction.
 The use of a managed, unique namespace for FIPA specification
 components would therefore be of great benefit:
  1. To the FIPA standards process: providing unique labels for

individual specification components.

  1. To developers implementing systems based on FIPA standards:

identifying which specifications are in use in a particular

    system, allowing them to develop software able to flexibly
    distinguish between different technologies used.
  1. To users of networks making use of FIPA technology (in whole or in

part): improving the integrity and clarity of interactions in the

    system, allowing them to precisely identify technology
    requirements for interacting with any given software system using
    FIPA technology.
 Whilst the assignment of identifiers is managed by the FIPA
 Architecture Board the application for identifiers is through the
 open FIPA standards process - thus anybody following the process is
 entitled to request an identifier for technologies they consider
 relevant to FIPA's work.
 Final acceptance of any FIPA standard is contingent on a vote of the
 FIPA membership.  Although membership is not free (see [2] for
 details of costs), it is open to any organisation with an interest in
 FIPA's work.
 The initial plans for identifier resolution are to host a web page on
 http://www.fipa.org to provide for resolution of identifiers FIPA
 will also encourage third parties (FIPA members and others) to host

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 5] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

 more advance dereferencing service or to develop software to provide
 dereferencing where these provide a correct and accurate reflection
 of the namespace.  FIPA itself may also engage in such activities.

5. IANA Considerations

 The IANA has registered formal URN namespace 14, to FIPA within the
 IANA registry of URN NIDs.

6. Security Considerations

 The FIPA URN Namespace ID shares the security considerations outlined
 in RFC 3406 [1], but has no other known security considerations.

7. References

7.1. Normative References

 [1]  Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R. and P. Faltstrom,
      "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition Mechanisms",
      BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002.

7.2. Informative References

 [2]  Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. http://www.fipa.org/
 [3]  Kindberg, T. and S. Hawke, "The 'tag' URI scheme and URN
      namespace", Work in Progress, September 2001.
 [4]  Stickler, P., "The 'voc:' URI scheme for Vocabulary Terms and
      Codes, Work in Progress, January 2002.

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 6] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

8. Authors' Addresses

 Fabio Bellifemine
 Chair of the FIPA Architecture Board
 Telecom Italia Lab
 EMail:   Fabio.Bellifemine@TILAB.COM
 Ion Constantinescu
 EPFL
 EMail:   ion.constantinescu@epfl.ch
 Steven Willmott
 Universitat Polit/210cnica de Catalunya
 EMail:   steve@lsi.upc.es

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 7] RFC 3616 URN Namespace for FIPA September 2003

9. Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
 English.
 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assignees.
 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
 "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS 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.

Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Bellifemine, et al. Informational [Page 8]

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