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1. Introduction

A Uniform Resource Name (URN) is a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [RFC3986] that is assigned under the "urn" URI scheme and a particular URN namespace, with the intent that the URN will be a persistent, location-independent resource identifier. A URN namespace is a collection of such URNs, each of which is (1) unique, (2) assigned in a consistent and managed way, and (3) assigned according to a common definition. (Some URN namespaces create names that exist only as URNs, whereas others assign URNs based on names that were already created in non-URN identifier systems, such as ISBNs [RFC3187], ISSNs [RFC3044], or RFCs [RFC2648].)

The assignment of URNs is done by an organization (or, in some cases, according to an algorithm or other automated process) that has been formally delegated a URN namespace within the "urn" scheme (e.g., a URN in the "example" URN namespace [RFC6963] might be of the form "urn:example:foo").

This document rests on two key assumptions:

  1. Assignment of a URN is a managed process.

  2. The space of URN namespaces is itself managed.

While other URI schemes may allow resource identifiers to be freely chosen and assigned, such is not the case for URNs. The syntactical correctness of a name starting with "urn:" is not sufficient to make it a URN. In order for the name to be a valid URN, the namespace identifier (NID) needs to be registered in accordance with the rules defined here, and the remaining parts of the assigned-name portion of the URN need to be generated in accordance with the rules for the registered URN namespace.

So that information about both URN syntax and URN namespaces is available in one place, this document does the following:

  1. Defines the canonical syntax for URNs in general (in a way that is consistent with URI syntax), specifies methods for determining URN-equivalence, and discusses URI conformance.

  2. Specifies a method for defining a URN namespace and associating it with a particular NID, and describes procedures for registering URN NIDs with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

For URN syntax and URN namespaces, this document modernizes and replaces the original specifications for URN syntax [RFC2141] and for the definition and registration of URN namespaces [RFC3406]. These modifications build on the key requirements provided in the original functional description for URNs [RFC1737] and on the lessons of many years of experience. In those original documents and in the present one, the intent is to define URNs in a consistent manner so that, wherever practical, the parsing, handling, and resolution of URNs can be independent of the URN namespace within which a given URN is assigned.

Together with input from several key user communities, the history and experiences with URNs dictated expansion of the URN definition to support new functionality, including the use of syntax explicitly reserved for future standardization in RFC 2141. All URN namespaces and URNs that were valid under the earlier specifications remain valid, even though it may be useful to update the definitions of some URN namespaces to take advantage of new features.

The foregoing considerations, together with various differences between URNs and URIs that are locators (specifically URLs) as well as the greater focus on URLs in RFC 3986 as the ultimate successor to [RFC1738] and [RFC1808], may lead to some interpretations of RFC 3986 and this specification that appear (or perhaps actually are) not completely consistent, especially with regard to actions or semantics other than the basic syntax itself. If such situations arise, discussions of URNs and URN namespaces should be interpreted according to this document and not by extrapolation from RFC 3986.

Summaries of changes from RFCs 2141 and 3406 appear in Appendices B and C, respectively. This document obsoletes both [RFC2141] and [RFC3406]. While it does not explicitly update or replace [RFC1737] or [RFC2276], the reader who references those documents should be aware that the conceptual model of URNs in this document is slightly different from those older specifications.

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