Re: Dereferencing a Reference with no URI attribute

I agree that since the URI is implicit, it could be a same-document 
reference. Perhaps instead of "know the identity of the object" it could 
have said "know the URI to be used".

Donald

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Sean Mullan wrote:

> Date: Mon, 09 Dec 2002 11:11:00 +0000
> From: Sean Mullan <sean.mullan@sun.com>
> To: Joseph Reagle <reagle@w3.org>
> Cc: w3c-ietf-xmldsig@w3.org
> Subject: Re: Dereferencing a Reference with no URI attribute
>
> Joseph Reagle wrote:
> > 
> > On Friday 06 December 2002 09:51 am, Sean Mullan wrote:
> > > I have a question about dereferencing (or identifying)
> > > a Reference without a URI attribute. Section 4.3.3.1 of
> > > xmldsig-core states, 4th paragraph:
> > >
> > > "If the URI attribute is omitted altogether, the receiving
> > > application is expected to know the identity of the object".
> > >
> > > Further on, in section 4.3.3.2, it states:
> > >
> > > "Unless the URI-Reference is a 'same-document' reference as defined
> > > in [URI, Section 4.2], the result of dereferencing the URI-Reference
> > > MUST be an octet stream."
> > >
> > > Does the statement above apply to a Reference with no URI
> > > attribute?
> > 
> > Interesting question, from the text my initial reading is that an "implicit
> > same-document reference" is not precluded. If fact, I'd expect this might
> > be common in the context of implicit references.
> > 
> > > Can it be represented as either an octet stream or
> > > a node set? Or, since it is undefined, is it technically NOT a
> > > same-document reference, and therefore MUST be dereferenced/identified
> > > as an octet stream?
> > 
> > While an interesting question, is this motivated by an actual example? I'm
> > wondering about the interop implications of this. For example, if I had a
> > signature with an implicit reference to a node-set, the first transform
> > might require a node-set for processing. Is this a problem? I don't see how
> > as the other side is already expected to know what the initial object is
> > (i.e., node-set).
> 
> The question is not motivated by any specific example; I just wanted to make
> sure that I was strictly abiding by the specification, which seemed a little 
> unclear to me. I'll assume a Reference w/o a URI attribute can implicitly 
> refer to either a node-set or octet stream.
> 
> Thanks,
> Sean
======================================================================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd                       dee3@torque.pothole.com
 155 Beaver Street              +1-508-634-2066(h) +1-508-851-8280(w)
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Received on Monday, 9 December 2002 08:22:55 UTC