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

Example

Before

<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>

After

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

Impact

This change will not be backward compatible and is one of several revisions planned in new major version.

Requested Feedback

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