Re: URN Namespace for MEF

[[e-mail] (Dale R. Worley)]

Section 2:

   Declaration of syntactic structure:

      The Namespace Specific String (NSS) of all URNs that use the MEF
      NID will be maintained by MEF Assigned Names and Numbers (MANN)
      registry.

This doesn't specify the syntactic structure.  I assume that the
intention is that this registration is to allow MANN to assign any NSS
that would be allowed by the generic URN specification.  But you should
say that.  I think you could say

      The syntax of namespace specific strings for the 'mef' namespace
      is <NSS> in RFC 2141.

The statement you now have in the section describes who manages mef
URNs, which is a useful thing, but doesn't belong in this section, I
think.  But I can't spot the place in the registration template where it
should go.

   Identifier uniqueness considerations:

      MEF could allow for use of experimental type values for testing
      purposes only.  Note that using experimental types may create
      collision as multiple users may use the same values for resources
      and specific strings.

First, you should say "for *different* resources ...".  If multiple
users use the same value for the same resources, there is nothing
unusual about that.

This provision doesn't bother me, but is likely to be objected to by
others.  And there can be practical problems -- experimental uses of
protocols by one user sometimes "leak" into experimental environments
operated by another use, causing unexpected results.  You should give
some though to avoiding this, IMO.  Perhaps:

1) Devise a system for allocating experimental values that allows each
user to generate values that will not be allocated by other users.
E.g., the pattern "urn:mef:experimental:foobar.com:..."; or

2) Define the "value" of an experimental URN in terms of its *function*
or high-level *meaning* ("denotes the string to be returned when
conditions X and Y occur"), allowing different users to have it be
translated in different manners or cause different effects, but always
with the same higher-level significance.

Dale