One document matched: draft-mealling-epc-urn-00.txt
Network Working Group M. Mealling
Internet-Draft Refactored Networks, LLC
Expires: September 19, 2005 March 18, 2005
A Uniform Resource Name Namespace For The EPCglobal Electronic
Product Code (EPC)
draft-mealling-epc-urn-00.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2005).
Abstract
This document describes a URN namespace that will identify various
objects within the EPCglobal system for identifying products within
ecommerce and supply chain management applications.
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1. Introduction
The EPCglobal Network is set of specifications for reading, managing
and acting on object codes plus other sensor data as products pass
through a supply chain. Events and metadata about a product are
stored in EPC Information Services (EPC-IS) that are essentially web
services that implement agreed upon schema and services.
Each object that is tracked by the EPCglobal Network is identified by
one or more managed identifiers. In many cases these identification
systems existed prior to the Internet becoming widely used. One such
namespace is the Global Trade Item Number, or GTIN. GTINs are widely
used in global commerce and are managed jointly by the European
Article Numbering (EAN) Association and the Uniform Code Council
(UCC). In order for the EPCglobal Network to leverage the Internet
to the fullest extent possible, the GTIN namespace (and others such
as Global Location Numbers (GLNs), Serialized Shipping Container Code
(SSCC), etc) need to be directly compatible with the URI family of
identifiers.
The use of GTINs, GLNs and SSCCs are all managed by the EAN.UCC
partnership known as EPCglobal, Inc. For these, and possibly future
namespaces, a single Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace ID (NID)
is being requested: 'epc'. Each of the namespaces mentioned will
have a separate sub-space beneath the top level 'epc' NID.
In addition to existing supply chain naming systems, the EPCglobal
Network will require new namespaces for naming system components. In
many cases the EPCglobal Network is XML [10] based and as such will
require naming schemes for its XML schema [8] and various namespaces
[9].
Since the EPCglobal Network is engineered for wide spread and general
use, this namespace specification is a formal one and the namespace
ID that is being requested is 'epc'. It is important to note that it
is the explicit intent that various sub-namespaces actually name
real, physical objects and/or corporeal entities.
2. Specification Template
Namespace ID:
"epc" requested.
Registration Information:
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Registration Version Number: 1
Registration Date: 2005-02-15
Declared registrant of the namespace:
EPCglobal, Inc. is a joint venture of EAN and the UCC
Princeton Pike Corporate Center
1009 Lenox Drive, Suite 202
Lawrenceville, NJ 08648, USA
msouthall@epcglobalus.org
Tel: +1-609-620-4542
Declaration of structure:
The normative specification of the structure of the EPC
namespace is "EPC Tag Data Standards" [7]. The examples given
below are not normative.
The 'epc' namespace is a set of sub-namespaces that can be
extended in the future. The following ABNF defines how the
sub-namespaces are identified and any restrictions on their
syntax (definitions not specified below can be found in RFC
2141 [1]):
EPC-URN = "urn:epc:" sub-namespace-name ":" sub-namespace
sub-namespace-name = <let-num> [ 1*<let-num-hyp> ]
sub-namespace = <URN chars>
<let-num-hyp> ::= <upper> | <lower> | <number> | "-"
<upper> ::= "A" | "B" | "C" | "D" | "E" | "F" | "G" | "H" |
"I" | "J" | "K" | "L" | "M" | "N" | "O" | "P" |
"Q" | "R" | "S" | "T" | "U" | "V" | "W" | "X" |
"Y" | "Z"
<lower> ::= "a" | "b" | "c" | "d" | "e" | "f" | "g" | "h" |
"i" | "j" | "k" | "l" | "m" | "n" | "o" | "p" |
"q" | "r" | "s" | "t" | "u" | "v" | "w" | "x" |
"y" | "z"
<number> ::= "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" |
"8" | "9"
For example, the sub-namespace 'sgtin' has the following
definition (this ABNF is non-normative):
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SGTIN-URI = "urn:epc:id:sgtin:" SGTINURIBody
SGTINURIBody = 2*(PaddedNumericComponent ".") NumericComponent
NumericComponent = ZeroComponent | NonZeroComponent
ZeroComponent = "0"
NonZeroComponent = NonZeroDigit *Digit
PaddedNumericComponent = *Digit
Digit = "0" | NonZeroDigit
NonZeroDigit = "1" | "2" | "3" | "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" | "8" | "9"
This equates to a namespace that has three period separated
series of digits:
urn:epc:id:sgtin:900100.0003456.1234567
The first series is a company prefix, the 2nd denotes a
product reference assigned by that company, and the third is a
serial number for a specific instance of their product. Note
that leading zeros are significant.
Relevant ancillary documentation:
The standards that define the EPCglobal Network and the
processes for creating new sub-namespaces are managed by
EPCglobal, Inc and can be found on its website. Several
sub-namespaces are defined in the "EPC Tag Data Standards" [7]
and the "PML Core Specification 1.0" [6] specifications.
Identifier uniqueness considerations:
The namespaces that make up the 'epc' namespace are all managed
by an organization with almost 50 years of namespace management
experience. In all cases (existing or new) the uniqueness of
each namespace is an inherent part of the EPCglobal Network.
Identifier persistence considerations:
The assignment process guarantees that names are not reassigned
and that the binding between the name and and its resource is
permanent, regardless of any standards or organizational
changes.
Process of identifier assignment:
Names are assigned by the EPCglobal standards publication
process and by any entities that are sub-delegated by
EPCglobal. It is important to note that in many cases the
names assigned will explicitly denote physical objects and not
an electronic representation of that object. For example, a
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'get' type operation on some identifiers can cause a physical
object to be transported from one physical location to another.
Process of identifier resolution:
Certain sub-namespaces are resolved via the Object Naming
Service which is defined in "Auto-ID Object Naming Service
(ONS) 1.0" [5] which is a valid implementation of the Dynamic
Delegation Discovery System that is defined in RFC 3401 [4].
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
The entire URN is case-sensitive.
Conformance with URN Syntax:
There are no additional characters reserved except as noted in
the ABNF above.
Validation mechanism:
In the case of each sub-namespace there will be namespace
specific rules for determining validity. In each case the
reader is referred to the appropriate EPC Global maintained
documentation.
Scope:
Global
3. IANA Considerations
This document includes a URN Namespace registration that is to be
entered into the IANA registry for URN NIDs.
4. Namespace Considerations
Due to EPCglobal Inc being a partnership between the two
internationally recognized authoritaties for identifiers the EPC
contains, this namespace represents the best approach to naming
products and entities within the world of supply chain management and
ecommerce in general. There are no other alternative namespaces that
have the level of authority and industry acceptance that the EPC
does.
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5. Community Considerations
The EPCglobal Network is intended to bring the Internet to the world
of supply chain management and beyond. It can be used to tie
physical objects to their virtual descriptions and as such has many
wide ranging applications for the average Internet use. Thus it is
very much the intent that this namespace and the entire EPCglobal
Network consider the entire Internet as the scope of its community.
6. Security Considerations
The EPCglobal Network is based almost exclusively on Internet and Web
standards. Thus the security impacts of each of its underlying
technologies should be examined for weaknesses and threats. The
primary threats will come from the fact that these names will
identify physical things that can be of high value, thus the
temptation to spoof metadata about that identifier (its cost, size,
etc) will be much greater. Therefore the role of digital signatures,
secure resolution mechanisms and trust relationships is very
fundamental to the system.
7. References
7.1 Normative References
[1] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[2] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997.
[3] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998.
[4] Mealling, M., "Dynamic Delegation Discovery System (DDDS) Part
One: The Comprehensive DDDS", RFC 3401, October 2002.
[5] Mealling, M., "EPCglobal Network Object Name Service (ONS) 1.0",
EPCglobal ONS 1.0, August 2003,
<http://www.epcglobalinc.org/standards_technology/Secure/v1.0/WD
-ons-1.0-20030930.pdf>.
[6] EPCglobal, Inc., "PML Core Specification 1.0", EPCglobal PML
1.0, September 2003,
<http://www.epcglobalinc.org/standards_technology/Secure/v1.0/PM
L_Core_Specification_v1.0.pdf>.
[7] EPCglobal, Inc., "EPC(tm) Tag Data Standards Version 1.1, Rev
1.26", EPCglobal Tag Data Standards 1.1, Feburary 2004,
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<http://www.epcglobalinc.org/standards_technology/specifications
.html>.
7.2 Non-normative References
[8] Maloney, M., Beech, D., Thompson, H. and N. Mendelsohn, "XML
Schema Part 1: Structures Second Edition", W3C
REC REC-xmlschema-1-20041028, October 2004.
[9] Tobin, R., Hollander, D., Layman, A. and T. Bray, "Namespaces
in XML 1.1", W3C REC REC-xml-names11-20040204, February 2004.
[10] Yergeau, F., Paoli, J., Sperberg-McQueen, C., Bray, T. and E.
Maler, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)",
W3C REC REC-xml-20040204, February 2004.
Author's Address
Michael Mealling
Refactored Networks, LLC
1635 Old Hwy 41
Suite 112, Box 138
Kennesaw, GA 30152
US
Phone: +1 678 581 9656
Email: michael@refactored-networks.com
URI: http://www.refactored-networks.com
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