Guidelines for Filenames, URIs, Namespaces, and Metadata

Editor: Robin Cover
Date: 2006-07-20
Version: 06a
Latest Version: http://docs.oasis-open.org/specGuidelines/namingGuidelines/resourceNaming.html
This Version: http://docs.oasis-open.org/specGuidelines/namingGuidelines/resourceNamingV06a.html
Status: The OASIS Board has approved the Guidelines for use as of 2006-08-02; OASIS Staff is authorized to update the guidelines from time to time as needed.
Review Comments: send to robin@oasis-open.org
Current Activity: 2006-09-29 add examples and commentary; incorporate information from the metadata supplement
Document Supplement: OASIS Naming Guidelines: Metadata and Versioning

Contents

Introduction

This draft "Guidelines for Filenames, URIs, and Namespaces" presents the principal content from the document of 2006-06-30, limited to the statement of provisional rules. Commentary and examples are now provided, also unofficially, in "Commentary on Guidelines for Filenames, URIs, and Namespaces." Guidelines for the creation and use of metadata are being prepared as of 2006-07.

Scope and Applicability

Name Characters

"Name Characters" here refers to characters used in URIs — including filenames, directory names, colon- or slash-delimited components within namespace URIs, delimiters, and possibly other URI subcomponents as may be labeled.

Rules

Name Construction

"Name construction" here refers to the lexical and syntactic structure of names, given the restricted character inventory. Motivations for the constraints include concerns for fidelity of interchange across file systems, minimizing the risks of common text-processing errors, usability (visual clarity), and other data QA. In other cases, arbitrary restriction of unbounded variablity serves the goal of simplicity through uniformity.

Rules

URI Design

Rules

XML Namespace Design, Allocation, and Management

Rules

Versioning

Metadata

[Update 2006-09-30: see now OASIS Naming Guidelines: Metadata and Versioning]

ASIS document sections on metadata have been removed in this document, as metadata design has been targeted for work as a separate design effort

References

Revision History