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DNS based URI without any set access semantics?

2002-07-25 08:40:37
IETF Gurus,

I'm looking for a URN scheme that uses DNS for uniqueness (perhaps in 
conjunction with a date) but doesn't have any attached semantics.  I'm 
asking this beacuse XML has the "duck" problem.  It uses URIs for 
namespace names, but only the URI syntax (for uniqueness), thus you see 
lots of http:// namespace names but the author never intended to support 
the retrieval of content given the namespace name.   Anyway, this is icky.
What XML really wanted was a URN that is based on DNS.  As it turns out
YAML (http://yaml.org) has exactly the same situation, only we are in
a position to do this correctly.  So, I was thinking something like...

  dnsurn://clarkevans.com/2002/my-data-type#my-format

Thus, the scheme follows *exactly* the syntax of HTTP (to keep learning
curve down) only that the date is required immediately following the
domain name.  The advantage of this over http is that it doesn't look
like a duck... "dnsurn" is not "http".  A further advantage is that
someone can use everything to the right of the dnsurn: as a http: URL
if they wish by just replacing the scheme.

I'm completely dogged for time... if something like this is possible
how hard would it be?  I'm not looking forward to having the equivalent
of "XML namespaces considered harmful" threads on our YAML list and
thing something like this would serve to help not only YAML but also
XML...

Best,

Clark