Subject: URN NID Postal Request

From: "Sean B. Palmer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 03:54:38 +0100

I probably won't register this (why bother?), but here it is for reference
and discussion purposes.

   Namespace ID:
      urn-<n>

   Registration Information:

      Registration version number: 1
      Registration date: 2001-09-01

   Declared registrant of the namespace:

      Name: Sean B. Palmer
      email address: <mailto:[email-masked]>

   Declaration of syntactic structure:

      urn            := "urn:" nid ":" nss
      nid            := "urn-" n
      n              := number-assigned-by-IANA
      country        := countrycode "," description
      description    := *urlchar
      postaldata     := *(*urlchar "/")
      nss            := country "/" +postaldata

   Examples of valid URNs under this scheme include:

<urn:urn-<n>:us,United%20States/MA%2002139/Cambridge/545%20Tech%20Square/
       World%20Wide%20Web%20Consortium/>
      <urn:urn-<n>:us,USA/My%20Postal%20Code/My%20Town/My%20Street/>

   Relevant ancillary documentation:

      <urlchar> is imported from RFC 2396, <urn:ietf:rfc:2396>
      <countrycode> is a single country code defined by ISO 3166, i.e. a
      valid ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 code element.
      cf.
http://www.din.de/gremien/nas/nabd/iso3166ma/codlstp1/en_listp1.html

      All URNs defined herein conform to:-
      Moats, R. "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

   Identifier uniqueness considerations:

      Each resource corresponds not to a real physical place, but the
      abstract postal address used to identify that place, and hence,
      uniqueness is guaranteed.

      These URNs may map many to one, but not one to many: it is
      impossible, practically speaking, to bind one address to n
      different postal resources (proof: if I address a letter, I
      expect it to reach the intended destination, otherwise there
      would be no point in addressing it).

   Identifier persistence considerations:

      URNs have the requirement that they be persistently bound to one
      resource, and not reassigned. This scheme sets out a syntax that
      allows people to create addresses intended for use in database
      systems that process URIs only; and as such, the persistence of
      each resource is guaranteed by the intrinsic stability of each
      countries postal system.

      This is a highly practical URN scheme, proof of the stability of
      the identifiers is given by the amount of letters sent worldwide,
      and the length of time for which postal services have been
      operating.

      Having the country code standardized by an ISO specification also
      facilitates persistence.

   Process of identifier assignment:

      Assignment of this URN scheme is fully open, as long as the syntax
      rules are obeyed.

   Process for identifier resolution:

      Resolution is controlled by entities to which assignment has
      been delegated, i.e. the postal services (if any) of the
      relevant country.

   Conformance with URN Syntax:

      Processors SHOULD follow the lexical equivalence considerations
      of the URN specification, although postal services tend to be
      flexible.

   Validation mechanism:

      None specified.

   Scope:

      Global.

This was derived from the "address:" URI scheme discussions on [email-masked] a
while ago.

Cheers,

--
Kindest Regards,
Sean B. Palmer
@prefix : <http://webns.net/roughterms/> .
:Sean :hasHomepage <http://purl.org/net/sbp/> .

---

From: Larry Masinter <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2001 08:11:27 -0700

> I probably won't register this (why bother?), but here it is for reference

...

> This was derived from the "address:" URI scheme discussions on
> [email-masked] a while ago.

A pointer to the discussion might be useful, then:

  http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/uri/2001Mar/thread.html#12