OIDs as URI/URNs....

Hi everyone,
  I'm crossposting this between the URN Working Group and the XMLDSIG
Working group. The issue is whether or not the OID URN namespace
document that is the process of being published should be ammended
to include the textual representation of the node in the OID tree.

the issue is whether the OID URN NID should look like this:
urn:oid:itu-t(0)/identified-organization(4)/etsi(0)/electronic-signature-sta
ndard(1733)/part1(1)/idupMechanism(4)/etsiESv1(1)

(note, the slashes would have to be changed or encoded since slashes
are deprecated in URNs due to hierarchy semantics in RFC 2396)

or like this:

urn:oid:0.4.0.1733.1.4.1

XMLDSIG apparently has some requirements for readability that is considered
dangerous for the persistence requirements for URNs. Should I update
the pending RFC 3001 and resubmit or should it go forward as is?

-MM


----- Forwarded message from Karl Scheibelhofer <Karl.Scheibelhofer@iaik.at> -----

From: "Karl Scheibelhofer" <Karl.Scheibelhofer@iaik.at>
To: <michaelm@netsol.com>
Subject: RE: OIDs as URIs
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 16:58:28 +0100
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> Hmm...interesting. URNs have the soft requirement of not being
> human readable.
> Where is the expection coming from for a user seeing and needing to
> understand an OID?

the main purpose for use to use OIDs in URIs is in XML signatures. there we
will need to use OIDs in form of URIs to refer to policies, other documents,
... that are already present and hav an OID. because XML has the great
advantage that it is plain text, it can be read (debugged) by humans by just
viewing it with any text editor. URIs are normally in form that you can
roughly get an idea what's behind it. if we just use the pure number
presentation of OIDs, i think (and others share this opinion) we are going
to lose one advantage.
however, i am aware of the fact that it is not absolutely required to work.
but it was a requirement in designing XML "XML documents should be
human-legible and reasonably clear". i think a pure number presentation of
OIDs does not meet this requirements.

best regards

  Karl Scheibelhofer

--

Karl Scheibelhofer, <mailto:Karl.Scheibelhofer@iaik.at>
Institute for Applied Information Processing and Communications (IAIK)
at Technical University of Graz, Austria, http://www.iaik.at
Phone: (+43) (316) 873-5540

----- End forwarded message -----

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Received on Monday, 27 November 2000 11:36:08 UTC