RFC 6288

URN Namespace for the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG)

📅 published August 2011, from ietf

RFC 6288: URN Namespace for the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG) 🎀

Okay bestie, let's start with the basics ✨. This is RFC 6288, titled URN Namespace for the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG). C. Reed from OGC wrote it, it's dated August 2011, and it's Informational (not a Standards Track spec, so it's published for info, not as a must-follow standard 💅). It's on the IETF stream with ISSN 2070-1721. The header doesn't list any Obsoletes or Updates fields, so it isn't replacing or changing another document. 🦋

Abstract 🌸

Abstract

This doc defines the Namespace Identifier (NID) for URN (Uniform Resource Name) Namespace resources published by the DGIWG. The DGIWG defines and manages resources that use this URN name model 💖. Management for these and other resource types is handled by the DGIWG Registry System (DRS) 🧚.

Status of This Memo ✨

This doc is not an Internet Standards Track spec, it's just here for information 🌈. It is a product of the IETF and represents IETF community consensus. It got public review and was approved for publication by the IESG. Not every IESG-approved doc is a candidate for any level of Internet Standard, so check Section 2 of RFC 5741 if you want the deets 🤓. You can find the current status, errata, and feedback info at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6288 🔗.

Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the document authors. All rights reserved 🌸. This doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents, at http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info, as in effect on the publication date. Please actually read those, bestie, they spell out your rights and restrictions 🙈. Any Code Components pulled from this doc must include the Simplified BSD License text described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come without warranty, as the Simplified BSD License describes 🫶.

Table of Contents 🍓

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. URN Specification for "dgiwg" NID ...............................3
   3. Examples ........................................................6
   4. Namespace Considerations ........................................6
   5. Community Considerations ........................................7
   6. Security Considerations .........................................7
   7. IANA Considerations .............................................8
   8. References ......................................................8
      8.1. Normative References .......................................8
      8.2. Informative References .....................................8

1. Introduction ✨

Okay so the DGIWG is a multinational group that gives coordinated advice and policy recommendations to the Defence orgs of its member nations 🫶. It makes the standards and recommended practices needed to provide, exchange, and exploit geospatial info. It backs the requirements of NATO and the other alliances its members are in, including UN-sanctioned peacekeeping 🎖️.

The DGIWG has defined, and keeps defining, standards, processes, and procedures for using international standards inside the DGIWG community 💅.

Its geospatial standards are built on the generic, abstract geographic info standards from ISO TC/211, and it uses the service specs endorsed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) 🌈.

The DGIWG also defines information components for building product specs and application schemas for military geospatial data 🧚. It sets service specs, encoding formats, and testing methods to meet military geospatial intelligence needs 🔥.

Some DGIWG solutions need XML namespaces that are managed so they stay unique and persistent 💖. To make the uniqueness absolute, registering a specific Namespace ID (NID) for the DGIWG was seen as the right move 🦋. So a full registration will go through the namespace specification process defined in [RFC3406] 📜. For how the DGIWG manages this and its other registries, check the "DGIWG Terminology Register Technical Specification" document [STD-DP-07-024-ed1.0.1] 🎀.

2. URN Specification for "dgiwg" NID 💖

Here's the full spec for the dgiwg NID, bestie 👑.

Namespace ID: dgiwg

Registration Information:

  • Registration version number: 1
  • Registration date: August 2011

Declared registrant of the namespace:

  • Registering organization: Defence Geospatial Information Working Group
  • Name: The Secretary (attn: Mr. Paul Burton)
  • Address:
    • Defence Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG)
    • UK Hydrographic Office
    • Admiralty Way
    • TAUNTON
    • Somerset TA1 2DN
    • United Kingdom

Designated contact:

  • Role: The DGIWG Registry Services Administrator
  • Email: dgiwg-urn-admin@dgiwg.org

Declaration of syntactic structure:

The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of every URN that uses the dgiwg NID has this structure 🧩:

urn:dgiwg:{DGIWGresource}:{ResourceSpecificString}

Here, DGIWGresource is a US-ASCII string that follows the URN syntax rules in [RFC2141] and names a specific class of resource type 🌸. Every resource type has its own labeling scheme, which lives in ResourceSpecificString, and that also has to follow the naming rules of [RFC2141]. The one exception is that the character : shall not be used in the DGIWGresource string, so nobody gets confused 🙈. Also, DGIWGresource is case sensitive, so watch those capitals.

The DGIWG runs a naming authority, the DGIWG Registration System (DRS), which manages the assignment of DGIWGresource values and the specific registration values for each resource class 👑. Other DGIWG standards docs will define the ResourceSpecificString values for each DGIWGresource.

Relevant ancillary documentation:

The DGIWG defines a bunch of specific lists of info elements that can be combined with models in product specs and application schemas, and it maintains them 📚. For more on the DRS and the registration activities and procedures, see the "DGIWG Terminology Register Technical Specification" document [STD-DP-07-024-ed1.0.1]. That doc gives the procedures for registering geographical items 🗺️. It's at https://portal.dgiwg.org/files/?artifact_id=5438&format=doc, and that's a stable URI 🔗. More info lives at http://www.dgiwg.org/dgiwg/htm/registers/registers.htm.

Identifier uniqueness considerations:

The DRS manages resources under the dgiwg NID and is the authority for the resource type identifiers and the strings tied to them 💅. In its procedures, the DRS will make sure the strings are unique, or it may hand secondary responsibility for well-defined sub-trees to someone else 🌳. URNs the DRS issues may not be reassigned. Absolutely no recycling those 🙅‍♀️.

The DGIWG may allow experimental type values that never get registered. That means several users might end up using the same value for different things 🤷‍♀️. Since experimental use is only for testing, this should not be a real issue 🧪.

Identifier persistence considerations:

The DRS will keep clear docs on the registered uses of the dgiwg NID 📖. It will set up a registry for DGIWGresources. Each DGIWGresource gets its own description in that registry, and it may have its own sub-registry 🗂️.

The DRS publishes and maintains the registries and info on its web site 🌐.

Process of identifier assignment:

As the DGIWG Terminology Register Technical Specification defines, the DRS provides procedures to register each type of resource it maintains 🧾. Each resource may have three kinds of registration activity:

  1. Registered values tied to DGIWG specs or services
  2. Registration of values or sub-registries for other entities
  3. Name models for experimental purposes

Process for identifier resolution:

The namespace isn't listed with a Resolution Discovery System (RDS), and that's not relevant here 🙅‍♀️.

Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

Nothing special here. The lexical equivalence rules of [RFC2141] apply 💅.

Conformance with URN Syntax:

No special considerations ✨.

Validation mechanism:

None specified. URN assignment is handled by the procedures run in support of DRS activities 🛠️.

Scope:

Global 🌍.

3. Examples 🎀

These are representative URNs that the DRS could assign. They might not be the actual strings that end up getting assigned, so don't copy them as gospel 🙈.

Example 1

DGIWGresource "crs"
Syntax: "urn:dgiwg:crs:<crs name>"

ResourceSpecificString: a simple string with the name of the coordinate reference system (CRS) defined in a sub-registry 🗺️.

Use: defines the URN for queries to a DGIWG CRS registry that provides URIs for the CRS 🔍.

Example 2

DGIWGresource "dfdd"
Syntax: "urn:dgiwg:fad:dfdd<fad_code>:<fad_name>"

The DGIWG keeps a feature and attribute data (FAD) registry with registers of geographic info concepts. Those concepts describe aspects of real-world phenomena for different info communities. You can check it at https://www.dgiwg.org/FAD/registers.jsp 📚.

urn:dgiwg:fad:dfdd:Aerodrome:aerodrome

urn:dgiwg:fad:dfdd:Helipad:helipad

urn:dgiwg:fad:dfdd:AerodromeMoveAreaLighting:aerodrome
      movement-area-lighting

4. Namespace Considerations 🧚

The Defence Geospatial Information Working Group is building a bunch of apps and services 🛸. Some of them need their supporting info (like data descriptions, attributes, and so on) to be fully specified 💖. To work properly, descriptions of that supporting info have to exist and be available in a unique, reliable, and persistent way 🔒. These dependencies are why namespaces are needed, in one form or another 🌈.

The DGIWG covers lots of technical areas and the work is ongoing, so binding to various other namespace repositories was judged impractical 😮‍💨. Each object or description the DGIWG defines could be related to several other namespaces, and that could cause more association conflicts 💀. So the plan is to use the Defence Geospatial Information Working Group Registration System, which the DGIWG operates, as the naming authority for DGIWG-defined objects and descriptions 👑.

5. Community Considerations 🫶

okay bestie, the objects and descriptions that DGIWG registration services need are publicly available for other organizations to use 💖 DGIWG is going to give public access and support for name requests from other orgs too 🌸 That support can be turned on in a timely and responsive way whenever new objects and descriptions get made ✨ It'll work in a similar way to current IANA processes 🦋 You can read about the DGIWG collaboration process on their website: http://www.dgiwg.org/dgiwg/ 💅

Okay, here's the part I'm obsessed with 🙈 DGIWG works with other standards organizations and also uses their standards, so there's a real need to avoid duplicate or replicated names, like the ones for coordinate reference systems 🌈 To keep names and namespaces consistent, DGIWG has formal relationships with both OGC and ISO 👑 As long as having consistent names and namespaces across these organizations does have security implications for certain classes of applications (see below), then shared names and namespaces will be used 🧚 Main character coordination energy, honestly 💜

6. Security Considerations 🔥

okay so for lots of apps that use DGIWG standards and terminology, there are no extra security considerations beyond the normal ones that come with using and resolving URNs in general 💅 Those are described in [RFC1737], [RFC2141], and [RFC3406] 📚

BUT (this is the serious bit, bestie 😭) for a certain class of apps tied to war fighter and peacekeeping operations, it's super important to have secure ways to access locations once URN resolution has happened (aka after the name-to-location resolution) 🛡️ In these cases, agreed-upon military command and control (C2) security, including authentication and authorization, shall be considered 🔐 Also, most communications in a military environment, just like in any environment, are low-level un-secure or minimally secure information 💀 The Internet is well used, and a URN is necessary for compatible web services 🌐 Stay safe out there, babe ✨

7. IANA Considerations 🎀

This document registers a brand new formal URN Namespace ID with IANA, which is "dgiwg" 🍓 It follows the procedures defined in RFC 3406 [RFC3406] 💜 The completed registration template is in Section 2 of this document 📝 You can find the "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces" registry on the IANA website: http://www.iana.org 🦋

8. References 📚

8.1. Normative 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.

8.2. Informative References 🌸

[RFC1737]   Sollins, K. and L. Masinter, "Functional Requirements for
            Uniform Resource Names", RFC 1737, December 1994.

[STD-DP-07-024-ed1.0.1]
            DGIWG Terminology Register Technical Specification,
            June 2008.

Author's Address 💌

Carl Reed, PhD
OGC, Inc.
2536 West Prospect
Fort Collins, CO
US

EMail: creed@opengeospatial.org
📦 where this page comes from