Protocol Action: 'The Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)' to Proposed Standard

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IESG has approved the following document:

- 'The Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol 
   (XCAP) '
   <draft-ietf-simple-xcap-12.txt> as a Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the SIP for Instant Messaging and 
Presence Leveraging Extensions Working Group. 

The IESG contact persons are Jon Peterson and Cullen Jennings.

A URL of this Internet-Draft is:
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-simple-xcap-12.txt

Technical Summary
 
In many communications applications, such as Voice over IP, instant
messaging, and presence, it is necessary for network servers to
access per-user information in the process of servicing a request.
While this per-user information resides on servers within the network, it
is managed by the end user themselves.  Management can be done through
many access points, including the web, a wireless handset, or a PC
application.
Among these per-user information stores are presence lists and
authorization
policiies, requirements for which have been specified by the SIMPLE
working
group.
This specification describes a protocol that can be used to
 manipulate this per-user data.   XCAP is essentially a set
of conventions for mapping XML documents and document components into
HTTP URLs, rules for how the modification of one resource affects
another, data validation constraints, and authorization policies
associated with access to those resources.  Because of this
structure, normal HTTP primitives can be used to manipulate the data.
XCAP is meant to support the configuration needs for a multiplicity of
applications, rather than just a single one.  It is not, however, a
general
purpose XML search protocol or XML database update protocol.


Working Group Summary
 
The working group came to consensus on this approach after significant
discussion  of the  trade-offs.  Adoption of an existing specification, 
like XPATH, was considered, but the balance of capabilities did not seem 
right to the working group; insteada more restricted set of capabilities 
tuned to this specific use case was agreed.  There were comments during 
the Last Call period, and this document reflects changes made to handle 
the issues raised.

Protocol Quality
 
This document was reviewed for the IESG by Ted Hardie and Jon Peterson.

RFC-Editor Note

Please add the following as a final paragraph to Section 1
(Introduction):

XCAP was not designed as a general purpose XML search protocol, nor an
XML database update protocol nor a general purpose XML-based configuration
protocol for network elements.


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