Proposal: Deprecate Use of QNames for IDs

Status: Open
Comment Period Closes: Affects Backwards Compatibility: No
Relevant Issue: https://github.com/MAECProject/schemas/issues/106

Background Information

In MAEC v4.1, all MAEC identifiers (IDs) are captured and formatted as qualified names (QNames). Each ID includes both a namespace portion (optional) and an ID portion (required), separated by a colon (":"). To use these IDs, MAEC consumers must map prefixes to namespaces in the head of the XML document.

Proposal

We propose using URIs instead of QNames for IDs. This follows a W3C recommendation (see http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/qnameids).

Example

<maecPackage:MAEC_Package ... xmlns:AcmeCompany="http://acme.example.com"...>
  <maecPackage:Malware_Subjects>
    <maecPackage:Malware_Subject id="AcmeCompany:example-sub-1">
    ...
    </maecPackage:Malware_Subject>
  </maecPackage:Malware_Subjects>
</maecPackage:MAEC_Package>

Impact

There is no expected compatibility impact.

Requested Feedback

1. Should URIs be used instead of QNames in IDs?