[urn] naming and the necessity of resolution

[Peter Saint-Andre <[e-mail]>]

<hat type='individual'/>

On 12/22/11 3:17 AM, Juha Hakala wrote:

> URNs and resolution services are parts of the URN system. Without
> services URN assignment would not make sense. 

This is the core of my worry: you assume that URNs are worthless if they
cannot be resolved. Yet the text you proposed includes these sentences:

   Resources identified with URNs may be abstract (e.g. works such as
   Shakespeare's Hamlet) or embodied in some physical form (PDF/A
   version of the Finnish translation of Hamlet). An abstract entity
   may have 0-n digital manifestations in the Internet (and other kind
   of manifestations in the physical world).

To my mind, an abstract resource with zero manifestations is not the
kind of thing that needs to be resolved. Examples might include:

* the UUID C1A95067-9ECF-4983-9675-2B9CAA70BB11, which has a name of
urn:uuid:C1A95067-9ECF-4983-9675-2B9CAA70BB11

* the SIEVE extension for a personal addressbook, which has a name of
urn:ietf:params:sieve:addrbook:personal

* the XML namespace used to advertise support for ZRTP by XMPP clients,
which has a name of urn:xmpp:jingle:apps:rtp:zrtp:1

As far as I can see, these URNs do not need to be resolved, yet they are
perfectly useful in the relevant applications.

Indeed, I ask you to look at the IANA registry for formal URN namespaces
at http://www.iana.org/assignments/urn-namespaces/ to see that many of
these NIDs are used to assign URNs that name abstract resources with
zero manifestations. Those URNs are just as valid and useful as URNs
that name abstract resources with 1+ manifestations.

I realize that resolution is important for the applications you care
about, but those are not the only applications of interest to people who
have minted URNs.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
http://stpeter.im/