RFC 6453

A URN Namespace for the Open Grid Forum (OGF)

📅 published December 2011, from ietf

Hey bestie, this is RFC 6453 ✨

Title: A URN Namespace for the Open Grid Forum (OGF) 🌸 Category: Informational 🦋 (this is NOT a Standards Track spec, just published for info vibes) Date: December 2011 📅 Authors: F. Dijkstra (SARA) and R. Hughes-Jones (DANTE) 👑 Obsoletes / Updates: The title block doesn't list any, so nothing here obsoletes or updates anything 🙈 ISSN: 2070-1721 💜

Abstract 🎀

okay so this doc is all about a URN (Uniform Resource Name) namespace that the Open Grid Forum (OGF) engineers so they can name persistent resources. it's giving permanent name tag energy 🏷️💖

Status of This Memo 💅

so, babe, this one is not an Internet Standards Track spec. it's just published for informational purposes ✨

it's still a real IETF product though! it has the consensus of the IETF community, got public review, and the IESG approved it for publication 🫶. 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 🤓

info about the current status, errata, and how to give feedback lives at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6453 🔗

Copyright Notice 🌈

okay this part is lowkey boring but it matters 😭

this doc is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) as they stood on the publication date. read them carefully, bestie, they spell out your rights and restrictions 📜

if you pull Code Components out of this doc, they MUST include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions, and they come with no warranty, same as the Simplified BSD License says 💀

Table of Contents 🧚

Introduction ........................................2 1.1. Requirements Language ......................................2
URN Specification for "ogf" Namespace ID (NID) ..................3 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 ...........................4 2.6. Identifier Uniqueness Considerations .......................4 2.7. Identifier Persistence Considerations ......................4 2.8. Process of Identifier Assignment ...........................5 2.9. Process of Identifier Resolution ...........................5 2.10. Rules for Lexical Equivalence .............................5 2.11. Conformance with URN Syntax ...............................5 2.12. Validation Mechanism ......................................6 2.13. Scope .....................................................6
Examples (Informative) ..........................................6
Namespace Considerations ........................................6
Community Considerations ........................................7
Security Considerations .........................................7
IANA Considerations .............................................7
Acknowledgements ................................................7
References ......................................................8 9.1. Normative References .......................................8 9.2. Informative References .....................................8

1. Introduction 🌷

okay so the Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development organisation in the distributed computing world 🖥️. they make docs like working drafts, specs, and schemata. more info at <http://www.ogf.org/> 🔗

the working groups over there said they NEED global, distributed, persistent identifiers for their working drafts and standards 😤 so the OGF wants to give URNs to some resources to keep unique, permanent, location-independent names for them 💖

this namespace spec is for a formal namespace, periodt 💅

1.1. Requirements Language 🎀

the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this doc are to be read as described in [RFC2119] 🫶

2. URN Specification for "ogf" Namespace ID (NID) 👑

2.1. Namespace ID 🏷️

the namespace ID is "ogf", where "ogf" is short for "Open Grid Forum" ✨

2.2. Registration Information 📅

Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: December 2011

2.3. Declared Registrant of the Namespace 🧑‍💼

the registrant is the Technical Director of the Open Grid Forum:

Technical Director
Open Grid Forum
P.O. Box 1738
Muncie, Indiana  47308
USA
http://www.ogf.org/
EMail: urn@ogf.org

and the Technical Director role is currently held by Joel Replogle 💜

2.4. Declaration of Syntactic Structure 🧩

the formal syntax is given in ABNF [RFC5234] 🔍

the namespace-specific string (NSS) in the urn:ogf names hierarchy starts with a subnamespace identifier (SNID), then a delimiter, then a subnamespace-dependent string ✨

   OGF-URN  =  "urn:ogf:" SNID ":" SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING

where <SNID> is a unique subnamespace identifier for the spec, and <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> is a unique identifier within the SNID's scope 🌈

<SNID> has the same syntax as a <NID> defined in [RFC2141]:

   SNID  =  ( ALPHA / DIGIT )  *31( ALPHA / DIGIT / "-" )

ALPHA and DIGIT come from Appendix B of [RFC5234] 🫧

the Technical Director at OGF (or their successors) assigns SNIDs 👑

the syntax of <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> depends on the <SNID> and MUST be defined by a Grid Forum Document [GFD.1] 📄 this doc doesn't add any extra restrictions beyond the NSS syntax from [RFC2141] (or its successor):

   SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING  =  1*<URN chars>

and <URN chars> is defined in Section 2.2 of [RFC2141] 💖

2.5. Relevant Ancillary Documentation 📚

the Technical Director at OGF (or their successors) keeps a list of assigned subnamespace identifiers and their docs at <http://www.ogf.org/urn/> [URN-OGF] 🗂️

how to register a subnamespace identifier is described in [GFD.191], and you can also find it on that same website 🔗

2.6. Identifier Uniqueness Considerations 🔐

uniqueness gets enforced by the Technical Director of the Open Grid Forum 👑

the OGF Technical Director may sub-delegate part of the namespace to third parties. it is NOT permissible, by the OGF or any third party, to re-assign previously assigned URNs 🚫 so a previously assigned subnamespace can't be re-assigned, unless extra arrangements are made to stop identifier re-assignments 🙅‍♀️

2.7. Identifier Persistence Considerations 🦋

the Technical Director will only assign subnamespace identifiers for persistent resources ✨

to enforce persistence for individual resources, each doc that defines subnamespace identifiers MUST have a section on the type of resource being specified (e.g., whether a URN in the subnamespace identifies a specific version, the latest version, a specific manifestation, or a more general concept) 📝

the namespace identifier "ogf" MUST NOT change, even if the Open Grid Forum changes its name or gets disbanded 💀🫶

2.8. Process of Identifier Assignment 📬

assigning subnamespace identifiers is limited to the OGF and to authorities specifically designated by the OGF Technical Director 🏛️ the OGF may hand over parts of its namespace (specifically, the ones under designated SNIDs) for assignment by third parties 🤝

the details are in [GFD.191] 📖

the syntax and semantics of each subnamespace MUST be defined by a Grid Forum Document [GFD.1] before the matching SNID is assigned ✅

2.9. Process of Identifier Resolution 🔎

the OGF namespace isn't currently listed with a Resolution Discovery System (RDS), but nothing about the namespace rules out defining resolution methods or listing with an RDS later 🌱

the OGF will keep an index of all subnamespace identifiers on its Website <http://www.ogf.org/urn/>. that list may point to known Resolution Discovery Systems 🗺️

2.10. Rules for Lexical Equivalence 🪞

the <SNID> part of URNs in the OGF hierarchy is case insensitive, so the <SNID> MUST be case normalised before comparison 🔡

the rules for lexical equivalence of the <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> part are specific to each SNID and MUST be defined when a SNID is assigned by the OGF Technical Director 🧠 those definitions MUST say whether case matters, and for %-escaped octets they MUST define the exact normalisation to use (e.g., interpret as octet, interpret as UTF-8, specify the type of Unicode normalisation, etc.) 🌍

2.11. Conformance with URN Syntax 🧾

the intention here is to only restrict the syntax of the <SNID>. the <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> follows the general URN syntax:

   SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING  =  1*<URN chars>

docs defining a subnamespace identifier SHOULD specify further syntactic restrictions on <SUBNAMESPACE-SPECIFIC-STRING> 💅 it is RECOMMENDED that those docs forbid URNs containing characters from the <reserved> set ("%", "/", "?", and "#") as defined in [RFC2141] 🚫 this is in line with Section 2.2 of [RFC3986] 🌸

for forward compatibility, it is RECOMMENDED that software implementations that don't validate subnamespace-specific strings validate the syntax using the generic URI rules in [RFC3986] 🔧 URIs may contain all the characters in <URN chars>, including the <reserved> ones (even though they have a special meaning), plus the characters "&" and "~" 🫧

2.12. Validation Mechanism ✅

the validation mechanism for URNs in the OGF hierarchy is specific to each SNID and SHOULD be defined when a SNID is assigned by the OGF Technical Director 🎯

URNs in the OGF hierarchy without an assigned SNID are considered invalid 🙅‍♀️

2.13. Scope 🌍

global URNs are relevant for the distributed computing community in general, and for the Open Grid Forum in particular 💜

3. Examples (Informative) 🧚‍♀️

no subnamespace identifiers have been defined yet, so no actual examples can be given. the following examples are NOT guaranteed to be real or even syntactically correct 🙈

Grid Forum Documents defining the "gfd" and "network" subnamespace identifiers may give the following examples:

urn:ogf:gfd:136
urn:ogf:network:canarie.ca:kisti-uninett-glif-001

that's part 1, bestie! 💖 more sections are coming in part 2, so stay tuned 🦋✨

4. Namespace Considerations ✨

Okay so the Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a standardisation development organisation in the field of distributed computing 🌐 basically the squad that writes the rules for grid stuff 💅

The use of the OGF hierarchy is expected to be broad, including but not limited to usage for:

Grid Forum Documents 📄
XML (Extensible Markup Language) Schemata 🎀
RDF (Resource Description Framework) Schemata 🌸

The Open Grid Forum is dedicated to openly publishing all technical documentation related to URNs in the OGF hierarchy and allowing unlimited distribution of these documents. It's giving open source energy 🫶

5. Community Considerations 💜

Members of the distributed computing community will benefit from persistent and globally unique identifiers for use in protocols developed by the Open Grid Forum ✨ literally the whole point!

Practical use of the urn:ogf namespace has been detected, and a formal registration will allow the Open Grid Forum to document this usage and enforce technical review of current practices. So people already using it get the paperwork and the review process 📋👑

6. Security Considerations 🔒

Okay, serious bestie moment 🙈 There are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general, which are described in [RFC1737], [RFC2141], and [RFC3406].

It is recommended that implementers check the OGF registry and documentation [URN-OGF] before assuming that a given identifier is valid or has a certain meaning. Don't just trust a URN because it looks legit 💀

7. IANA Considerations 🧚

IANA has registered the "ogf" namespace identifier (NID) with a reference to this document in the "Formal URN Namespaces" sub-registry [RFC3406] of the "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces" registry [URN-NAMESPACES]. Officially on the list now, iykyk 🦋

8. Acknowledgements 🌈

The template and useful examples from [RFC3406] formed the basis for this document. The authors would like to thank Joel Replogle and Andre Mersky for setting up the urn:ogf subnamespace registry. Jeroen van der Ham, Peter Saint-Andre, and Mykyta Yevstifeyev proofread this document and provided valuable feedback. Iconic cast, honestly 👑🫶

9. References 📚

9.1. Normative References

[GFD.191] Dijkstra, F., Hughes-Jones, R., Newby, G., and J. Replogle, "Procedure for Registration of Subnamespace Identifiers in the URN:OGF Hierarchy", GFD 191, December 2011, <http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.191.pdf>.

[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

[RFC3986] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R., and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax", STD 66, RFC 3986, January 2005.

[RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed., and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, January 2008.

9.2. Informative References

[GFD.1] Catlett, C., "GGF Document Series", GFD 1, April 2002, <http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.1.pdf>.

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

[RFC3406] Daigle, L., van Gulik, D., Iannella, R., and P. Faltstrom, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespace Definition Mechanisms", BCP 66, RFC 3406, October 2002.

[URN-NAMESPACES] IANA, "Uniform Resource Names (URN) Namespaces", <http://www.iana.org/>.

[URN-OGF] Open Grid Forum, "URN:OGF Hierarchy Registry and Documentation", <http://www.ogf.org/urn/>.

Authors' Addresses 🫶

Freek Dijkstra
SARA
Science Park 121
Amsterdam  1098 XG
NL

EMail: Freek.Dijkstra@sara.nl


Richard Hughes-Jones
DANTE
City House
126-130 Hills Road
Cambridge  CB2 1PQ
UK

EMail: Richard.Hughes-Jones@dante.net

📦 where this page comes from

ietf: rfc6453 2011-12
💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on 2026-10-17: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms