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Network Working Group
Request for Comments: 5174
Category: Informational
J-P. Evain
EBU
May 2008

A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for

the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)

Status of This Memo

This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for naming persistent resources defined within EBU technical documentation and Internet resources. Example resources include technical documents and specifications, eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Schemas, classification schemes, XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs), namespaces, style sheets, media assets, and other types of resources produced or managed by the EBU.

Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................2
   2. Specification Template ..........................................2
   3. Examples ........................................................4
   4. Namespace Considerations ........................................4
   5. Community Considerations ........................................5
   6. Security Considerations .........................................6
   7. IANA Considerations .............................................6
   8. Normative References ............................................6

1. Introduction

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the largest non-for profit professional association of broadcasters worldwide and was established in 1950. The Union has more than 70 active members in 55 countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and more than 40 associate members in 25 countries further afield. The EBU negotiates broadcasting rights for major sport events, operates the Eurovision and Euroradio networks, organizes program exchanges and co-productions, and provides other operational and legal support. It provides technical advice to its members and favors the adoption of standardized solutions in broadcast systems from content ingest to end-user delivery. EBU activities cover traditional broadcast and new delivery medias, such as the Internet, for which a growing number of resources are being developed.

The EBU would like to assign unique, permanent, location-independent names based on URNs for some resources it produces or manages.

This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.

2. Specification Template

Namespace ID: 

      "ebu"

Registration Information: 

      Version: 1
      Date: 2007-02-20

Declared registrant of the namespace: 

      Name:           Jean-Pierre Evain
      Title:          Senior Engineer
      Affiliation:    European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
      Address:        Ancienne Route 17a
                      CH-1218 Geneva
                      SWITZERLAND
      Phone:          +41 22 717 2734
      Email:          evain@ebu.ch

Declaration of structure:

URNs assigned by the EBU will have the following hierarchical structure based on the organizational structure of the EBU resources: 

                         urn:ebu:{category}:{string}

where "{category}" is a US-ASCII string that conforms to the syntax of the <NID>, and "{string}" is a US-ASCII string that conforms to the syntax of the <NSS> [RFC2141].

The individual URNs will be assigned by the EBU through the development process of EBU resources.

Relevant ancillary documentation:

More information on the EBU and relevant technical activities can be found at http://www.ebu.ch/metadata.

Identifier and namespace uniqueness considerations:

The EBU understands the vital necessity for uniqueness and will establish unique identifiers and namespaces under the authority of its metadata expert group under the auspices of the EBU Production Management Committee to prevent re-assignation of existing identifiers and namespaces.

Identifier and namespace persistence considerations:

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) shall ensure the accessibility and persistence of all resources that are officially assigned URNs by the organization, in particular upon suitable delegation at the level of "{category}"s, and persistence of category assignment.

Process of identifier and namespace assignment:

The assignment of identifiers and namespaces is fully controlled and managed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Process of identifier resolution:

The owner will develop and maintain "URN catalogues" that map all assigned URNs to Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) specifically to enable Web-based resolution of named resources. In the future, an interactive online resolution system may be developed to automate this process.

The owner will authorize additional resolution services as appropriate.

Rules for Lexical Equivalence:

The "{category}" is case-insensitive. Thus, the portion of the URN:

urn:ebu:{category}:

is case-insensitive for matches up to {category}. The remainder of the identifier shall be considered case-sensitive; hence, URNs are only lexically equivalent if they are also lexically identical in the remaining "{string}" field.

Conformance with URN Syntax:

No special considerations.

Validation mechanism:

The owner will develop and maintain URN catalogues. The presence of a URN in a catalogue indicates that it is valid. Validation shall more particularly be done by a syntax grammar corresponding to each "{category}".

Scope: 

      Global

3. Examples

The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are presented for pedagogical reasons only. 

      urn:ebu:metadata:pmeta_2007
      urn:ebu:metadata-cs:EscortCS_2007

4. Namespace Considerations

The EBU develops and maintains metadata schemas and classification schemes, which are made publicly available from http://www.ebu.ch/metadata for integration or cross reference in third party implementations, technical specifications and standards. Reference to the urn:ebu namespace shall be a guarantee of open access and quality.

Furthermore, the value of well-defined namespaces is fully recognized including for versioning purposes, which will be facilitated through the EBU maintenance of its own namespace dictated by the following rules.

URN assignment procedures:

The individual URNs shall be assigned through the process of development of EBU resources by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

URN resolution/delegation:

The resolution and delegation shall be determined through the process of development of EBU resources by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

Type of resources to be identified:

Types of resources to be identified include XML schema definition files, classification schemes, and identification systems.

Type of services to be supported:

Types of services supported include controlled term lookup in classification schemes and resolution of IDs in identification systems.

5. Community Considerations

The EBU traditionally addresses the broadcasting community, but its resources are made available to all interested parties.

Communities involved in offering content over new IP-based delivery medias such as via the Internet and mobile communication networks, or using IP infrastructures and Service-Oriented Architectures are welcome to use EBU resources. Metadata and content identifiers, for which the EBU mainly needs the urn:ebu namespace, play a key role in content search and retrieval, end-to-end from content commissioning to user delivery.

Web services, search engines, and the semantic web are among the core technologies that the EBU is now exploiting to access users in a multimedia multi-platform connected world.

Potential beneficiary developing communities include:

a) Implementers and users of EBU resources.

Resources that comply with EBU specifications (including schemas, instance documents that comply with EBU schemas, and the EBU default Classification Schemes) may, by means of the registered namespace, become exposed to the general Internet and gain from the interoperability benefits of the Internet at large.

b) Implementers of other specifications that incorporate part or

all of available EBU resources.

URNs used to identify EBU resources may be used to enable their inclusion in, and enhancement of, other specifications while maintaining, to a certain degree, interoperability with the EBU (see a) above).

c) Implementers of other semantically related specifications that

do not directly incorporate part or all of EBU resources.

URNs used to identify EBU resources, such as identifiers of terms within default Classification Schemes, may enable interoperation with other semantically determined specifications (including present and future metadata/resource description and ontology specifications) of relevance to EBU implementation communities (see a) and b) above).

6. Security Considerations

   The portion of the URN, urn:ebu:{category}:, is case-insensitive for
   matches up to {category}.

Otherwise, there are no additional security considerations other than those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in general.

7. IANA Considerations

The IANA has registered the formal URN namespace 'ebu' (38) to the EBU within the IANA registry of URN NIDs, according to the registration template in Section 2.

8. Normative References

   [RFC2141]  Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.

Author's Address

Jean-Pierre Evain
European Broadcasting Union
Technical Department
L'ancienne route 17A
CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex (GE)
SWITZERLAND 

   Phone: +41 22 717 2734
   Fax:   +41 22 74 74 734
   EMail: evain@ebu.ch

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