Common Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP)
RFC 3367

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Network Working Group                                            N. Popp
Request for Comments: 3367                                   M. Mealling
Category: Standards Track                                 VeriSign, Inc.
                                                              M. Moseley
                                                           Netword, Inc.
                                                             August 2002

                 Common Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP)

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   People often refer to things in the real world by a common name or
   phrase, e.g., a trade name, company name, or a book title.  These
   names are sometimes easier for people to remember and type than URLs.
   Furthermore, because of the limited syntax of URLs, companies and
   individuals are finding that the ones that might be most reasonable
   for their resources are being used elsewhere and so are unavailable.
   For the purposes of this document, a "common name" is a word or a
   phrase, without imposed syntactic structure, that may be associated
   with a resource.

   This effort is about the creation of a protocol for client
   applications to communicate with common name resolution services, as
   exemplified in both the browser enhancement and search site
   paradigms.  Although the protocol's primary function is resolution,
   it is also intended to address issues of internationalization and
   localization.  Name resolution services are not generic search
   services and thus do not need to provide complex Boolean query,
   relevance ranking or similar capabilities.  The protocol is a simple,
   minimal interoperable core.  Mechanisms for extension are provided,
   so that additional capabilities can be added.

Popp, et. al.               Standards Track                     [Page 1]
RFC 3367         Common Name Resolution Protocol (CNRP)      August 2002

Table of Contents

   1.      Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3
   2.      Important Notes  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.1     Terminology  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.2     DTD is Definitive  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  4
   2.3     Uniform Resource Identifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.      Interaction Model  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.1     Services, Servers, Datasets and Referrals  . . . . . . . .  5
   3.2     Requests and Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  5
   3.3     Transport Independence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.4     Character encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  6
   3.5     Queries  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   3.6     Hints  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  7
   4.      Object Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.1     Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.1.1   Core properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  8
   4.1.2   Abstract and custom properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.1.3   Base properties  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  9
   4.1.4   Common name string encoding and equivalence rules  . . . . 11
   4.2     Objects  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   4.2.1   Query  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
   4.2.1.1 Logical operations within a Query  . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
   4.2.2   Results  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   4.2.2.1 ResourceDescriptor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
   4.2.3   Service  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   4.2.3.1 Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
   4.2.3.2 Servers  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
   4.2.4   Status Messages  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   4.2.4.1 Status of CNRP, Not the Transport  . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   4.2.4.2 Codes and Description  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   4.2.4.3 Status Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
   4.2.5   Referral . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
   4.2.5.1 Loop Detection and Dataset Handling in Servers . . . . . . 22
   4.2.6   Discoverability: ServiceQuery and Schema . . . . . . . . . 24
   5.      XML DTD for CNRP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
   6.      Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
   6.1     Service Description Request  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28