OASIS Naming Guidelines Part 1: Filenames, URIs, Namespaces

OASIS Naming Guidelines, In Two Parts

Part 1: Filenames, URIs, Namespaces
Part 2: Metadata and Versioning


Note: For Technical Committee work governed by the OASIS Technical Committee Process effective October 15, 2010, please see the document OASIS Naming Directives, which updates the naming rules to match the revised TC Process. Information in this document may still be useful for background (e.g., rationale for vintage-2008 decisions) and other historic purposes. For most other purposes, the OASIS Naming Directives document supercedes this document — OASIS Naming Guidelines, In Two Parts and commentary.


Date: 2008-10-09, Minor Update 2009-08-01
Editor: Robin Cover
Version: 08
This Version: http://docs.oasis-open.org/specGuidelines/namingGuidelines/resourceNamingV08.html
Latest Version: http://docs.oasis-open.org/specGuidelines/namingGuidelines/resourceNaming.html
Previous Version: http://docs.oasis-open.org/specGuidelines/namingGuidelines/resourceNamingV07.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

Contents

Introduction

This document (OASIS Naming Guidelines Part 1: Filenames, URIs, Namespaces) presents core requirements for naming; rules for display metadata and versioning are presented in OASIS Naming Guidelines Part 2: Metadata and Versioning. Commentary and examples are provided in "Commentary on Guidelines for Filenames, URIs, and Namespaces."

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