A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
A standard namespace for naming EBU resources and documents.
Evain, J-P., "A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)", RFC 5174, DOI 10.17487/RFC5174, May 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5174>.
@misc{rfc5174,
series = {Request for Comments},
number = 5174,
howpublished = {RFC 5174},
publisher = {RFC Editor},
doi = {10.17487/RFC5174},
url = {https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5174},
author = {J-P. Evain},
title = {{A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)}},
pagetotal = 8,
year = 2008,
month = may,
} RFC text
Contents
Network Working Group J-P. Evain
Request for Comments: 5174 EBU
Category: Informational May 2008
A Uniform Resource Name (URN) Namespace for
the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
Status of This Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Abstract
This document describes a Uniform Resource Name (URN) namespace for
the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for naming persistent resources
defined within EBU technical documentation and Internet resources.
Example resources include technical documents and specifications,
eXtensible Markup Language (XML) Schemas, classification schemes, XML
Document Type Definitions (DTDs), namespaces, style sheets, media
assets, and other types of resources produced or managed by the EBU.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Specification Template ..........................................2
3. Examples ........................................................4
4. Namespace Considerations ........................................4
5. Community Considerations ........................................5
6. Security Considerations .........................................6
7. IANA Considerations .............................................6
8. Normative References ............................................6
1. Introduction
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the largest non-for profit
professional association of broadcasters worldwide and was
established in 1950. The Union has more than 70 active members in 55
countries in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and more than
40 associate members in 25 countries further afield. The EBU
negotiates broadcasting rights for major sport events, operates the
Eurovision and Euroradio networks, organizes program exchanges and
co-productions, and provides other operational and legal support. It
provides technical advice to its members and favors the adoption of
standardized solutions in broadcast systems from content ingest to
end-user delivery. EBU activities cover traditional broadcast and
new delivery medias, such as the Internet, for which a growing number
of resources are being developed.
The EBU would like to assign unique, permanent, location-independent
names based on URNs for some resources it produces or manages.
This namespace specification is for a formal namespace.
2. Specification Template
Namespace ID:
"ebu"
Registration Information:
Version: 1
Date: 2007-02-20
Declared registrant of the namespace:
Name: Jean-Pierre Evain
Title: Senior Engineer
Affiliation: European Broadcasting Union (EBU)
Address: Ancienne Route 17a
CH-1218 Geneva
SWITZERLAND
Phone: +41 22 717 2734
Email: evain@ebu.ch
Declaration of structure:
URNs assigned by the EBU will have the following hierarchical
structure based on the organizational structure of the EBU
resources:
urn:ebu:{category}:{string}
where "{category}" is a US-ASCII string that conforms to the
syntax of the <NID>, and "{string}" is a US-ASCII string that
conforms to the syntax of the <NSS> [RFC2141].
The individual URNs will be assigned by the EBU through the
development process of EBU resources.
Relevant ancillary documentation:
More information on the EBU and relevant technical activities can
be found at http://www.ebu.ch/metadata.
Identifier and namespace uniqueness considerations:
The EBU understands the vital necessity for uniqueness and will
establish unique identifiers and namespaces under the authority of
its metadata expert group under the auspices of the EBU Production
Management Committee to prevent re-assignation of existing
identifiers and namespaces.
Identifier and namespace persistence considerations:
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) shall ensure the
accessibility and persistence of all resources that are officially
assigned URNs by the organization, in particular upon suitable
delegation at the level of "{category}"s, and persistence of
category assignment.
Process of identifier and namespace assignment:
The assignment of identifiers and namespaces is fully controlled
and managed by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Process of identifier resolution:
The owner will develop and maintain "URN catalogues" that map all
assigned URNs to Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) specifically to
enable Web-based resolution of named resources. In the future, an
interactive online resolution system may be developed to automate
this process.
The owner will authorize additional resolution services as
appropriate.
Rules for Lexical Equivalence:
The "{category}" is case-insensitive. Thus, the portion of the
URN:
urn:ebu:{category}:
is case-insensitive for matches up to {category}. The remainder
of the identifier shall be considered case-sensitive; hence, URNs
are only lexically equivalent if they are also lexically identical
in the remaining "{string}" field.
Conformance with URN Syntax:
No special considerations.
Validation mechanism:
The owner will develop and maintain URN catalogues. The presence
of a URN in a catalogue indicates that it is valid. Validation
shall more particularly be done by a syntax grammar corresponding
to each "{category}".
Scope:
Global
3. Examples
The following examples are not guaranteed to be real. They are
presented for pedagogical reasons only.
urn:ebu:metadata:pmeta_2007
urn:ebu:metadata-cs:EscortCS_2007
4. Namespace Considerations
The EBU develops and maintains metadata schemas and classification
schemes, which are made publicly available from
http://www.ebu.ch/metadata for integration or cross reference in
third party implementations, technical specifications and standards.
Reference to the urn:ebu namespace shall be a guarantee of open
access and quality.
Furthermore, the value of well-defined namespaces is fully recognized
including for versioning purposes, which will be facilitated through
the EBU maintenance of its own namespace dictated by the following
rules.
URN assignment procedures:
The individual URNs shall be assigned through the process of
development of EBU resources by the European Broadcasting Union
(EBU).
URN resolution/delegation:
The resolution and delegation shall be determined through the
process of development of EBU resources by the European
Broadcasting Union (EBU).
Type of resources to be identified:
Types of resources to be identified include XML schema definition
files, classification schemes, and identification systems.
Type of services to be supported:
Types of services supported include controlled term lookup in
classification schemes and resolution of IDs in identification
systems.
5. Community Considerations
The EBU traditionally addresses the broadcasting community, but its
resources are made available to all interested parties.
Communities involved in offering content over new IP-based delivery
medias such as via the Internet and mobile communication networks, or
using IP infrastructures and Service-Oriented Architectures are
welcome to use EBU resources. Metadata and content identifiers, for
which the EBU mainly needs the urn:ebu namespace, play a key role in
content search and retrieval, end-to-end from content commissioning
to user delivery.
Web services, search engines, and the semantic web are among the core
technologies that the EBU is now exploiting to access users in a
multimedia multi-platform connected world.
Potential beneficiary developing communities include:
a) Implementers and users of EBU resources.
Resources that comply with EBU specifications (including
schemas, instance documents that comply with EBU schemas, and
the EBU default Classification Schemes) may, by means of the
registered namespace, become exposed to the general Internet
and gain from the interoperability benefits of the Internet at
large.
b) Implementers of other specifications that incorporate part or
all of available EBU resources.
URNs used to identify EBU resources may be used to enable their
inclusion in, and enhancement of, other specifications while
maintaining, to a certain degree, interoperability with the EBU
(see a) above).
c) Implementers of other semantically related specifications that
do not directly incorporate part or all of EBU resources.
URNs used to identify EBU resources, such as identifiers of
terms within default Classification Schemes, may enable
interoperation with other semantically determined
specifications (including present and future metadata/resource
description and ontology specifications) of relevance to EBU
implementation communities (see a) and b) above).
6. Security Considerations
The portion of the URN, urn:ebu:{category}:, is case-insensitive for
matches up to {category}.
Otherwise, there are no additional security considerations other than
those normally associated with the use and resolution of URNs in
general.
7. IANA Considerations
The IANA has registered the formal URN namespace 'ebu' (38) to the
EBU within the IANA registry of URN NIDs, according to the
registration template in Section 2.
8. Normative References
[RFC2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
Author's Address
Jean-Pierre Evain
European Broadcasting Union
Technical Department
L'ancienne route 17A
CH-1218 Grand-Saconnex (GE)
SWITZERLAND
Phone: +41 22 717 2734
Fax: +41 22 74 74 734
EMail: evain@ebu.ch
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AI ELI5
On this page
§1What the EBU Is and Why It Needs Persistent Names
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the world's largest non-profit professional association of broadcasters, founded in 1950 with more than 70 active members in 55 countries. It negotiates broadcasting rights for major sports events, operates Eurovision and Euroradio, organizes program exchanges and co-productions, and provides technical advice and standardized solutions across broadcast systems.
As the EBU develops new delivery methods—especially over the Internet and IP-based networks—it produces a growing number of technical resources: specifications, XML schemas, classification schemes, metadata definitions, and style sheets. These resources are often incorporated or referenced by other organizations' systems. To ensure these resources can be reliably identified and located regardless of where they move or how they are accessed, the EBU needed a formal, persistent naming system.
The EBU is a big organization that makes lots of technical documents and standards for broadcasters. They needed a system where each document gets an official permanent name so people can always find it, no matter where it is stored.
§2The URN Namespace Structure
RFC 5174 registers the urn:ebu namespace with the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). A URN is a Uniform Resource Name—a way to identify a resource by what it is, rather than where it lives (unlike a URL).
All EBU URNs follow a hierarchical structure: urn:ebu:{category}:{string}. The category field is case-insensitive and organizes resources by type (such as 'metadata', 'metadata-cs', or others defined by the EBU). The string portion is case-sensitive and uniquely identifies the specific resource within that category. For example, urn:ebu:metadata:pmeta_2007 identifies a particular metadata document.
The EBU maintains strict control over URN assignment through its metadata expert group under the Production Management Committee, ensuring each URN is unique and never reassigned.
All EBU names follow the pattern urn:ebu:[type]:[name]. The type tells you what kind of thing it is (like metadata or classification), and the name is the specific document. Each one is unique and permanent.
§3Resources and Categories
The urn:ebu namespace identifies a wide range of resources produced and managed by the EBU. These include XML schema definition files that define the structure of broadcast metadata documents, classification schemes that organize content by type or category, and identification systems that track broadcast assets and content.
The namespace also covers style sheets, namespaces, XML DTDs (Document Type Definitions), and other technical definitions used in broadcast and IP-based delivery. The EBU assigns categories hierarchically based on its organizational structure, allowing for organized growth as new resource types are created.
Each category can support multiple resources, and the EBU ensures that communities using EBU specifications or incorporating EBU resources can rely on these permanent identifiers for versioning, interoperability, and long-term reference.
The namespace covers all the different kinds of documents and standards the EBU makes: definitions of how documents should be structured, lists of categories for organizing content, rules for naming things, and more. Each type of thing gets its own category name.
§4Resolution and Management
The EBU maintains URN catalogues that map each assigned URN to specific Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). These catalogues enable web-based resolution of named resources—when someone encounters a URN like urn:ebu:metadata:pmeta_2007, the catalogue provides the actual location where that resource can be retrieved.
Validation of URNs is performed by checking them against the maintained catalogues and by verifying they conform to syntax rules specific to each category. The EBU has published its technical activities and metadata information at http://www.ebu.ch/metadata.
Although the RFC was published in 2008, the document notes that future interactive online resolution systems may be developed to automate URI resolution. In the meantime, static catalogues serve as the primary resolution mechanism, and the EBU may authorize additional resolution services as appropriate.
The EBU keeps a big index that says which urn:ebu name points to which actual file or web page. When you see a URN, you can look it up in their index to find where the actual document is stored.
§5Community Adoption and Uses
The RFC identifies three main groups who benefit from the urn:ebu namespace. Implementers and users of EBU resources can now refer to EBU specifications with stable, global identifiers that gain the benefits of Internet-wide interoperability. Implementers of other specifications that incorporate or build upon EBU resources can use URNs to reference and enhance other specifications while maintaining interoperability. Creators of semantically related specifications—such as metadata frameworks and ontology systems—can use EBU resource identifiers to enable interoperation across specification communities.
The value of the namespace is particularly important as new IP-based delivery media (like the Internet and mobile networks), web services, search engines, and semantic web technologies become central to broadcast distribution. With persistent URN identifiers, resources can be reliably located, versioned, and referenced across heterogeneous systems and organizations.
Broadcasters, software companies, and other organizations can now use these permanent names in their own systems and documents, knowing the names will never change. If someone builds a new system that uses EBU definitions, they can point to them by their permanent URN names.