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IETF RFC 5874
An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Format for Indicating a Change in XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) Resources
Last modified on Thursday, May 20th, 2010
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Rosenberg
Request for Comments: 5874 jdrosen.net
Category: Standards Track J. Urpalainen
ISSN: 2070-1721 Nokia
May 2010
An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Format for
Indicating a Change in
XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) Resources
 Abstract
This specification defines a document format that can be used to
indicate that a change has occurred in a document managed by the
Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol
(XCAP). This format reports which document has changed and its
former and new entity tags. It can report the differences between
versions of the document, using an XML patch format. It can report
existing element and attribute content when versions of an XCAP
server document change. XCAP diff documents can be delivered to diff
clients using a number of means, including a Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) event package.
Status of This Memo
This is an Internet Standards Track document.
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has
received public review and has been approved for publication by the
Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on
Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 5741.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5874.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2010 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 1 
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF
Contributions published or made publicly available before November
10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this
material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow
modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process.
Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling
the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified
outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other
than English.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Structure of an XCAP Diff Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. XML Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5. Example Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Basic Requirements for a System Exchanging XCAP Diff
Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.1. application/xcap-diff+xml MIME Type . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8.2. URN Sub-Namespace Registration for
urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
8.3. Schema Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
9. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix A. Informative Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
A.1. Indicating Existing, Changed, or Removed Documents . . . . 18
A.2. Indicating Actual Changes of Documents . . . . . . . . . . 21
A.3. Indicating XCAP Component Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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1. Introduction
The Extensible Markup Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol
(XCAP) [RFC 4825] is a protocol that allows XCAP clients to manipulate
XML documents stored on a server. These XML documents serve as
configuration information for application protocols. As an example,
resource list [RFC 4662] subscriptions (also known as presence lists)
allow a SIP client to have a single SIP subscription to a list of
users, where the list is maintained on a server. The server will
obtain presence for those users and report it back to the SIP client.
This application requires the server, called a Resource List Server
(RLS), to have access to the list of presentities [RFC 2778]. This
list needs to be manipulated by XCAP clients so they can add and
remove their friends as they desire.
Complexities arise when multiple XCAP clients attempt to
simultaneously manipulate a document, such as a presence list.
Frequently, an XCAP client will keep a copy of the current list in
memory, so it can render it to users. However, if another XCAP
client modifies the document, the cached version becomes stale. This
modification event must be made known to all clients that have cached
copies of the document, so that they can fetch the most recent one.
To deal with this problem, clients can use a Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) [RFC 3261] event package [RFC 3265] to subscribe to
change events [RFC 5875] in XCAP documents. This notification needs
to indicate the specific resource that changed and how it changed.
One solution for the format of such a change notification would be a
content indirection object [RFC 4483]. Though content indirection can
tell a client that a document has changed, it provides it with a MIME
Content-ID indicating the new version of the document. The MIME
Content-ID is not the same as the entity tag, which is used by XCAP
for document versioning. As such, a client cannot easily ascertain
whether an indication of a change in a document is due to a change it
just made or due to a change another XCAP client made at around the
same time. Furthermore, content indirections don't indicate how a
document changed; they are only able to indicate that it did change.
To resolve these problems, this document defines a data format that
can convey the fact that an XML document managed by XCAP has changed.
This data format is an XML document format, called an XCAP diff
document. This format reports which document has changed and its
former and new entity tags. It can report the differences between
versions of the document, using an XML patch format [RFC 5261], which
indicate how to transform the locally cached XCAP document from the
version prior to the change to the version after it. Its intent is
to reduce the required overall bandwidth and the number of separate
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
transmissions. It can also report existing element and attribute
content when versions of an XML document change at an XCAP server.
XML documents that are equivalent for the purposes of many
applications may differ in their physical representation. Similar to
XCAP, the canonical form with comments [W3C.REC-xml-c14n-20010315] of
an XML document determines the logical equivalence when this format
is used to patch locally cached XCAP documents.
2. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC 2119] and
indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.
This specification also defines the following additional terms:
Document: When the term document is used without the "(XCAP) diff"
in front of it, it refers to the XCAP document resource about
which the XCAP diff document is reporting a change.
Diff document: The XML document defined by this specification that
reports on a set of changes in an XCAP document resource. It is
delivered from a server to a diff client by a transport that is
not defined by this specification.
XCAP server: A protocol entity that manages XCAP documents and their
entity tags. It usually contains an integrated diff notifier.
Diff notifier: This is the entity of a server that generates XCAP
diff documents based on its knowledge of a set of XCAP documents
and their changes, and it transmits the generated diff documents
to a diff client within a session.
Diff client: A client that consumes XCAP diff documents in order to
construct a locally cached document that is equivalent to a
specific version of a document resource stored at an XCAP server.
It is typically a SIP User Agent (UA) and an XCAP client.
XCAP Client: A client that updates and retrieves documents stored at
an XCAP server. It can also patch element and attribute content
of XCAP documents located at an XCAP server.
Locally cached resource: A resource that has typically been
downloaded by HTTP from an XCAP server to a diff client. It may
have been patched locally by a diff client based on the XCAP diff
document information. It is equivalent to a single version in its
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change history at an XCAP server. Version history of XCAP
documents is indicated by HTTP entity tags (ETags).
ETag: A strong HTTP entity tag whose value is set by an XCAP server.
Documents at an XCAP server are updated by XCAP clients. The XCAP
server assigns a new ETag value to each document version according
to the HTTP specification.
3. Structure of an XCAP Diff Document
An XCAP diff document is an XML [W3C.REC-xml-20060816] document that
MUST be well-formed and SHOULD be valid. XCAP diff documents MUST be
based on XML 1.0 and MUST be encoded using UTF-8. This specification
makes use of XML namespaces for identifying XCAP diff documents and
document fragments. The namespace URI for elements defined by this
specification is a URN [RFC 2141], using the namespace identifier
'ietf' defined by [RFC 2648] and extended by [RFC 3688]. This URN is:
urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff
An XCAP diff document begins with the root element tag <xcap-diff>.
This element has a single mandatory attribute, "xcap-root". The
value of this attribute is the XCAP root URI for the documents in
which the changes have taken place. A single XCAP diff document can
only represent changes in documents within the same XCAP root. The
content of the <xcap-diff> element is a sequence of <document>,
<element>, and <attribute> elements followed by any number of
elements from other namespaces for the purposes of extensibility.
Wherever the XML schema (see Section 4) allows extension elements or
attributes, any such unknown content MUST be ignored by the diff
client.
Each <document> element specifies changes in a specific document
within the XCAP root. If several <document> elements pinpoint the
same specific document, i.e., for example, the full entity tag (ETag)
change history is indicated, the corresponding patches MUST be able
to be applied in the given XCAP diff document order.
Note: This requirement simplifies applications that process XCAP
diff documents since there's no need to sort patch instructions
when applying them.
The <document> element has one mandatory attribute, "sel", and two
optional attributes, "new-etag" and "previous-etag". The "sel"
attribute of the <document> element identifies the specific document
within the XCAP root for which changes are indicated. Its content
MUST be a relative path reference, with the base URI being equal to
the XCAP root URI. The "new-etag" attribute provides the entity tag
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
(ETag) for the document after the application of the changes,
assuming the document exists after those changes. The "previous-
etag" attribute provides an identifier for the document instance
prior to the change. If the change being reported is the removal of
a document, only the "previous-etag" MUST be included and the "new-
etag" attribute MUST NOT be present. The "new-etag" attribute MUST
only exist alone when the document either exists or it was just
created (no patch included). Both attributes are present when a
patch (or series of XCAP operations) has been applied to the
resource. Also, both attributes MAY be used to indicate an ETag
change without any document modifications (patches).
The "previous-etag" and "new-etag" need not have been sequentially
assigned ETags at the server. An XCAP diff document can indicate
changes that have occurred over a series of XCAP operations. The
only requirement then is that the sequence of events, when executed
serially, will result in the transformation of the document with the
ETag "previous-etag" to the one whose ETag is "new-etag". Also, the
series of operations do not have to be the same exact series of
operations that occurred at the server.
Each <document> element contains either a sequence of patching
instructions or an indication that the body hasn't semantically
changed. The latter means that the document has been assigned a new
ETag but its content is unchanged and it is indicated by the <body-
not-changed> element. Patching instructions are described by the
<add>, <replace>, and <remove> elements. These elements use the
corresponding add, replace, and remove types defined in [RFC 5261],
and define a set of patch operations that can be applied to transform
the locally cached document. See [RFC 5261] for instructions on how
this transformation is effected. The <document> element can also
contain elements from other namespaces for the purposes of
extensibility. The <add>, <replace>, and <remove> elements allow
extension attributes from any namespace.
Figure 1 shows <document> element content and how the corresponding
resource or metadata changes. In practice, an external document
retrieval means HTTP GET requests for target resources. The asterisk
character '*' means that a <document> element has child element(s):
<add>, <replace>, or <remove>, or alternatively only a <body-not-
changed> element. The hyphen character '-' means that the
corresponding content (attribute or element) doesn't exist in a
<document> element. The 'xxx' and 'yyy' are values of entity tags
(ETag) of an XCAP document.
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| previous- | new- | <add> | <body- | locally cached |
| etag | etag | <replace> | not- | XCAP resource/ |
| | | <remove> | changed> | metadata change |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| xxx | yyy | * | - | resource patched, |
| | | | | patch included |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| xxx | yyy | - | - | resource patched, |
| | | | | external document |
| | | | | retrieval |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| xxx | yyy | - | * | only ETag changed |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| - | yyy | - | - | resource created |
| | | | | or exists, |
| | | | | external document |
| | | | | retrieval |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
| xxx | - | - | - | resource removed |
+-----------+----------+-----------+----------+-------------------+
Figure 1: <document> element content / corresponding resource changes
Each <element> element indicates the existing element content of an
XCAP document. It has one mandatory attribute, "sel", and
optionally, an "exists" attribute and extension attributes from any
namespace. The "sel" attribute of the <element> element identifies
an XML element of an XCAP document. It is a percent-encoded relative
URI following XCAP conventions when selecting elements. The XCAP
Node Selector MUST always locate a unique node, the "exists"
attribute thus shows whether an element exists or not in the XCAP
document. When the "exists" attribute is absent from the <element>
element, the indicated element still exists in the XCAP document.
The located element exists as a child element of the <element>
element. In a corner case where the content of this element cannot
be presented for some reason (e.g., the payload is too large)
although it exists in the XCAP document, the <element> element MUST
NOT have any child nodes.
As the located XML element is typically namespace qualified, all
needed namespace declarations MUST exist within the <xml-diff>
document. The possible local namespace declarations within the
located element exist unmodified as in the source document, similar
to XCAP conventions. Other namespace references MUST be resolved
from the context of the <element> or its parent elements. The
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
prefixes of qualified names (QNames) [W3C.REC-xml-names-20060816] of
XML nodes also remain as they originally exist in the source XCAP
document.
Each <attribute> element indicates the existing attribute content of
an XCAP document. It has one mandatory attribute, "sel", and
optionally, an "exists" attribute and extension attributes from any
namespace. The "sel" attribute of the <attribute> element identifies
an XML attribute of an XCAP document. It is a percent-encoded
relative URI following XCAP conventions when selecting attributes.
The "exists" attribute indicates whether or not an attribute exists
in the XCAP document. When the "exists" attribute is absent from the
<attribute> element, the indicated attribute still exists in the XCAP
document. The child text node of the <attribute> element indicates
the value of the located attribute. Note that if the attribute is
namespace qualified, the query parameter of the XCAP URI indicates
the attached namespace URI and the prefix in the XCAP source
document.
Namespaces of the "sel" attribute of the <attribute> and <element>
elements MUST also be resolved properly. Section 6.4. of [RFC 4825]
describes the rules when using namespace prefixes in XCAP Node
Selectors. Without a namespace prefix in an element selector, an
XCAP Default Document Namespace MUST be applied. The namespace
resolving rules of Patch operation elements: <add>, <replace>, and
<remove> are described in Section 4.2.1 of [RFC 5261].
4. XML Schema
The XML Schema for the XCAP diff format.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
targetNamespace="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
elementFormDefault="qualified"
attributeFormDefault="unqualified">
<!-- include patch-ops -->
<xs:include
schemaLocation="urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:patch-ops"/>
<!-- document root -->
<xs:element name="xcap-diff">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence minOccurs="0">
<xs:sequence minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:choice>
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<xs:element name="document" type="documentType"/>
<xs:element name="element" type="elementType"/>
<xs:element name="attribute" type="attributeType"/>
</xs:choice>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:any namespace="##other" processContents="lax"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="xcap-root" type="xs:anyURI" use="required"/>
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<!-- xcap document type -->
<xs:complexType name="documentType">
<xs:choice minOccurs="0">
<xs:element name="body-not-changed" type="emptyType"/>
<xs:sequence minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:choice>
<xs:element name="add">
<xs:complexType mixed="true">
<xs:complexContent>
<xs:extension base="add">
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:complexContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="remove">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:complexContent>
<xs:extension base="remove">
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:complexContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="replace">
<xs:complexType mixed="true">
<xs:complexContent>
<xs:extension base="replace">
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:complexContent>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:any namespace="##other" processContents="lax"/>
</xs:choice>
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
</xs:sequence>
</xs:choice>
<xs:attribute name="sel" type="xs:anyURI" use="required"/>
<xs:attribute name="new-etag" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:attribute name="previous-etag" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:complexType>
<!-- xcap element type -->
<xs:complexType name="elementType">
<xs:complexContent mixed="true">
<xs:restriction base="xs:anyType">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:any processContents="lax" namespace="##any"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
</xs:sequence>
<xs:attribute name="sel" type="xs:string"
use="required"/>
<xs:attribute name="exists" type="xs:boolean"/>
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:restriction>
</xs:complexContent>
</xs:complexType>
<!-- xcap attribute type -->
<xs:complexType name="attributeType">
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base="xs:string">
<xs:attribute name="sel" type="xs:string"
use="required"/>
<xs:attribute name="exists" type="xs:boolean"/>
<xs:anyAttribute processContents="lax"/>
</xs:extension>
</xs:simpleContent>
</xs:complexType>
<!-- empty type -->
<xs:complexType name="emptyType"/>
</xs:schema>
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5. Example Document
The following is an example of a document compliant to the schema.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<d:xcap-diff xmlns:d="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:rls-services"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/root/">
<d:document new-etag="7ahggs"
sel="resource-lists/users/sip:joe@example.com/coworkers"
previous-etag="8a77f8d"/>
<d:element sel="rls-services/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~
/*/service%5b@uri='sip:marketing@example.com'%5d"
xmlns:rl="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:resource-lists"
><service uri="sip:marketing@example.com">
<list name="marketing">
<rl:entry uri="sip:joe@example.com"/>
<rl:entry uri="sip:sudhir@example.com"/>
</list>
<packages>
<package>presence</package>
</packages>
</service></d:element>
<d:attribute
sel="rls-services/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/*/service/@uri"
>sip:marketing@example.com</d:attribute>
</d:xcap-diff>
This indicates that the document with the URI "http://
xcap.example.com/root/resource-lists/users/sip:joe@example.com/
coworkers" has changed. Its previous entity tag is "8a77f8d" and its
new one is "7ahggs", but actual changes are not shown. The <service>
element exists in the rls-services "index" document and its full
content is shown. Note that the <service> element is attached with a
default namespace declaration within the original document.
Similarly, "uri" attribute content is shown from the same "index"
document as an illustrative example.
6. Basic Requirements for a System Exchanging XCAP Diff Documents
Documents at an XCAP server are identified by URIs, and updated by
XCAP clients with HTTP (PUT and DELETE) methods. The XCAP server
assigns a new entity tag value for each document version. An entity
tag value is defined by Section 3.11 of RFC 2616 [RFC 2616]: "An
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
entity tag MUST be unique across all versions of all entities
associated with a particular resource". These entity tags are used
to protect requests from making overriding changes when multiple XCAP
clients update the same XCAP document. An entity tag value can be
interpreted as a unique identifier to a specific version of an XCAP
document in its change history.
The entity tag values of XCAP resources also enable a reliable way to
update the locally cached XCAP resource copies in an XCAP diff
implementation. When a diff client applies XCAP diff document
changes, it MUST apply a resource state change only if entity tag
values match with octet-by-octet equivalence according to the table
defined in Figure 1. If a diff client notices inconsistencies and/or
errors when it applies reported resource changes, it SHOULD tear down
the session.
State changes of an XCAP document MUST be delivered reliably from a
diff notifier to a diff client, and a diff client MUST be able to
apply all changes of an XCAP document in the same chronological order
that occurred at an XCAP server. When using an unreliable transport
with retransmissions, the application protocol used with the XCAP
diff MUST ensure that duplicates are dropped. If an XCAP diff
delivery is lost, the diff session MUST be torn down. Note that a
diff notifier can easily notice a lost notification when a diff
client must respond to each XCAP diff delivery.
A diff notifier doesn't necessarily report all of these XCAP document
updates with ETags; it MAY skip over some intermediate version of a
document, for example, with rapidly changing resources. However, it
MUST always report changes consistently to a diff client so that it
can properly update the latest state (content and ETag) of its
locally cached resources.
As an example, an XCAP document is updated by different 'a', 'b',
and 'c' versions identified with the same corresponding ETag
values in a relatively short period. The first reported
notification contains the 'a' "new-tag" information (no "previous-
etag" attribute), and the diff notifier decides to skip the update
notification identified by the 'b' ETag value. The second
notification to a diff client MUST then contain the 'a' "previous-
etag" and 'c' "new-etag" values with optional corresponding
content changes (from version 'a' to 'c').
Since XCAP documents are typically confidential, diff notifiers MUST
obey the XCAP authorization rules. In practice, this means following
the read privilege rules of XCAP resources when notifying the
authenticated diff clients of changes. Transport SHOULD be secured
by encryption.
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Note: This format specification doesn't define how to select the
resources whose differences a diff notifier should report. It
also doesn't define whether actual content changes should be
reported. Typically, however, a diff client starts a session by
sending a resource listing request. Then it compares the remote
resource listings with locally cached ones, and probably downloads
those resources that aren't locally cached or whose entity tags
differ. When a diff client receives an XCAP diff with a
"previous-etag" value that matches its current cached copy of a
document, it can apply the diffs to the cached copy. As it takes
some time to download reference documents, and diff notifications
appear after actual resource state changes, several round trips
may be needed before a full synchronization is achieved,
especially with rapidly changing resources.
7. Security Considerations
XCAP diff documents can include changes from one version of a
document to another version. As a consequence, if the document
itself is sensitive and requires confidentiality, integrity, or
authentication, then the same applies to the XCAP diff format.
Therefore, protocols that transport XCAP diff documents must provide
sufficient security capabilities for transporting the document
itself. Confidential XCAP documents are typically transported using
TLS-encrypted (Transport Layer Security) [RFC 5246] communication; see
RFC 4825 [RFC 4825] for further security details.
When this format is used to report content changes of XCAP documents,
all security considerations of RFC 5261 [RFC 5261] apply. Very
frequent updates of XCAP documents and/or many diff clients per
subscribed resource impose a Denial-of-Service attack possibility to
the servers processing XCAP diff documents. An efficient patch
processing and throttling can, however, decrease the required overall
processings and transactions.
The SIP event package framework specified in RFC 3265 [RFC 3265] is
the most typical use-case for this format. Then, an end-to-end SIP
encryption mechanism, such as Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (S/MIME) described in Section 26.2.4 of RFC 3261
[RFC 3261], SHOULD be used. If that is not available, it is
RECOMMENDED that TLS [RFC 5246] be used between elements to provide
hop-by-hop authentication and encryption mechanisms as described in
Section 26.2.2 ("SIPS URI Scheme") and Section 26.3.2.2 ("Interdomain
Requests") of RFC 3261 [RFC 3261]. Event packages MAY also have other
specific threats that MUST be considered on an application-by-
application basis.
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
8. IANA Considerations
There are several IANA considerations associated with this
specification.
8.1. application/xcap-diff+xml MIME Type
MIME media type name: application
MIME subtype name: xcap-diff+xml
Mandatory parameters: none
Optional parameters: Same as the charset parameter application/xml as
specified in RFC 3023 [RFC 3023].
Encoding considerations: Same as the encoding considerations of
application/xml as specified in RFC 3023 [RFC 3023].
Security considerations: See Section 10 of RFC 3023 [RFC 3023] and
Section 7 of RFC 5874.
Interoperability considerations: none.
Published specification: This document.
Applications that use this media type: This document type has been
used to support manipulation of resource lists [RFC 4826] using XCAP.
Additional Information:
Magic Number: None
File Extension: .xdf
Macintosh file type code: "TEXT"
Personal and email address for further information: Jonathan
Rosenberg, jdrosen@jdrosen.net
Intended usage: COMMON
Author/Change controller: The IETF.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 14
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
8.2. URN Sub-Namespace Registration for
urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff
This section registers a new XML namespace, as per the guidelines in
[RFC 3688].
URI: The URI for this namespace is
urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff.
Registrant Contact: IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org),
Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net).
XML:
BEGIN
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.0//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic10.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1"/>
<title>XCAP Diff Namespace</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Namespace for XCAP Diff</h1>
<h2>urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff</h2>
<p>See <a
href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/RFC 5874.txt">RFC 5874</a>.</p>
</body>
</html>
END
8.3. Schema Registration
This section registers a new XML schema per the procedures in
[RFC 3688].
URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:xcap-diff
Registrant Contact: IETF, SIMPLE working group, (simple@ietf.org),
Jonathan Rosenberg (jdrosen@jdrosen.net).
The XML for this schema can be found as the sole content of
Section 4.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 15
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
9. Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Pavel Dostal, Jeroen van Bemmel,
Martin Hynar, Anders Lindgren, Mary Barnes, Ben Campbell, Francis
Dupont, David Harrington, Alexey Melnikov, Dan Romascanu, and Robert
Sparks for their valuable comments.
10. References
10.1. Normative References
[W3C.REC-xml-20060816]
Paoli, J., Bray, T., Yergeau, F., Maler, E., and C.
Sperberg-McQueen, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
(Fourth Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium
FirstEdition REC-xml- 20060816, August 2006, <http://
www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816>.
[W3C.REC-xml-c14n-20010315]
Boyer, J., "Canonical XML Version 1.0", World Wide Web
Consortium Recommendation REC-xml-c14n-20010315,
March 2001, <http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/
REC-xml-c14n-20010315>.
[W3C.REC-xml-names-20060816]
Hollander, D., Layman, A., and T. Bray, "Namespaces in XML
1.0 (Second Edition)", World Wide Web Consortium
FirstEdition REC-xml-names-20060816, August 2006,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/ 2006/REC-xml-names-20060816>.
[RFC 2141] Moats, R., "URN Syntax", RFC 2141, May 1997.
[RFC 2616] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter,
L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol -- HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
[RFC 3023] Murata, M., St. Laurent, S., and D. Kohn, "XML Media
Types", RFC 3023, January 2001.
[RFC 2648] Moats, R., "A URN Namespace for IETF Documents", RFC 2648,
August 1999.
[RFC 3688] Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688,
January 2004.
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 16
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
[RFC 4825] Rosenberg, J., "The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)", RFC 4825, May 2007.
[RFC 5261] Urpalainen, J., "An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Patch
Operations Framework Utilizing XML Path Language (XPath)
Selectors", RFC 5261, September 2008.
[RFC 5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The Transport Layer Security
(TLS) Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246, August 2008.
10.2. Informative References
[RFC 5875] Urpalainen, J. and D. Willis, "An Extensible Markup
Language (XML) Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) Diff
Event Package", RFC 5875, May 2010.
[RFC 2778] Day, M., Rosenberg, J., and H. Sugano, "A Model for
Presence and Instant Messaging", RFC 2778, February 2000.
[RFC 3261] Rosenberg, J., Schulzrinne, H., Camarillo, G., Johnston,
A., Peterson, J., Sparks, R., Handley, M., and E.
Schooler, "SIP: Session Initiation Protocol", RFC 3261,
June 2002.
[RFC 3265] Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific
Event Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002.
[RFC 4662] Roach, A., Campbell, B., and J. Rosenberg, "A Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) Event Notification Extension for
Resource Lists", RFC 4662, August 2006.
[RFC 4826] Rosenberg, J., "Extensible Markup Language (XML) Formats
for Representing Resource Lists", RFC 4826, May 2007.
[RFC 4483] Burger, E., "A Mechanism for Content Indirection in Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP) Messages", RFC 4483, May 2006.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 17
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
Appendix A. Informative Examples
These informative examples illustrate basic features of XCAP diff
format.
The following documents exist at an XCAP server (xcap.example.com)
with an imaginary "tests" application usage (there's no default
document namespace defined in this imaginary application usage).
http://xcap.example.com/tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc id="bar">
<note>This is a sample document</note>
</doc>
and then
http://xcap.example.com/tests/users/sip:john@example.com/index:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc>
<note>This is another sample document</note>
</doc>
A.1. Indicating Existing, Changed, or Removed Documents
Firstly, an XCAP diff document can indicate what documents exist in a
collection. An XCAP diff document may then be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xcap-diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<document new-etag="7ahggs"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index"/>
<document new-etag="terteer"
sel="tests/users/sip:john@example.com/index"/>
</xcap-diff>
This listing indicates current ETags of existing documents and their
relative URIs.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 18
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
Let's say that Joe adds a new document to his collection:
PUT /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: [XXX]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc>
<note>This is another sample document</note>
</doc>
The requests result header has an HTTP ETag "terteer" for this new
document.
Then an XCAP diff document may then indicate only the creation of
this single new document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xcap-diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<document new-etag="terteer"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document"/>
</xcap-diff>
A "new-etag" without a "previous-etag" attribute indicates a creation
of a new document.
Then Joe decides to modify an existing resource:
PUT /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Length: [XXX]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc>
<note>This is a modified document</note>
</doc>
The reported new HTTP ETag is "huwiias".
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 19
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
Then an XCAP diff document may be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xcap-diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<document previous-etag="terteer" new-etag="huwiias"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document"/>
</xcap-diff>
Both "previous-etag" and "new-etag" attributes signal that a
modification has happened to a resource, but actual changes are not
shown.
Let's say that Joe then removes a document from his collection:
DELETE /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
This HTTP DELETE request results in the unlinking of the resource,
and the XCAP diff may be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xcap-diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<document previous-etag="huwiias"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/another_document"/>
</xcap-diff>
Thus, a "previous-etag" without a "new-etag" attribute indicates the
removal of a resource.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 20
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
A.2. Indicating Actual Changes of Documents
Secondly, XCAP diff documents are capable of showing actual changes
to documents with [RFC 5261] patching semantics.
Now Joe's XCAP client utilizes the XCAP patching capability to add a
new element to a document:
PUT /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/foo HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Type: application/xcap-el+xml
Content-Length: [XXX]
<foo>this is a new element</foo>
Since the insertion of the element is successful, Joe's XCAP client
receives the new HTTP ETag "fgherhryt3" of the updated "index"
document.
Immediately thereafter, Joe's XCAP client issues another HTTP request
(this request could even be pipelined):
PUT /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/bar HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Type: application/xcap-el+xml
Content-Length: [XXX]
<bar>this is a bar element
</bar>
The reported new HTTP ETag of "index" is now "dgdgdfgrrr".
And then Joe's XCAP client issues yet another HTTP request:
PUT /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/foobar HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Type: application/xcap-el+xml
Content-Length: [XXX]
<foobar>this is a foobar element</foobar>
The reported new ETag of "index" is now "63hjjsll".
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 21
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
XCAP diff format document may then indicate these XCAP component
changes by:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<d:xcap-diff xmlns:d="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<d:document previous-etag="7ahggs3"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index"
new-etag="63hjjsll">
<d:add sel="*"
><foo>this is a new element</foo><bar>this is a bar element
</bar><foobar>this is a foobar element</foobar></d:add>
</d:document>
</d:xcap-diff>
Note how several XCAP component modifications were aggregated
together, and full history information got lost.
Alternatively, the content could have been:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<d:xcap-diff xmlns:d="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<d:document previous-etag="7ahggs"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index"
new-etag="fgherhryt3">
<d:add sel="*"
><foo>this is a new element</foo></d:add></d:document>
<d:document previous-etag="fgherhryt3"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index"
new-etag="dgdgdfgrrr">
<d:add sel="*"
><bar>this is a bar element
</bar></d:add></d:document>
<d:document previous-etag="dgdgdfgrrr"
sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index"
new-etag="63hjjsll">
<d:add sel="*"
><foobar>this is a foobar element</foobar></d:add></d:document>
</d:xcap-diff>
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RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
This shows the full ETag change history of a document, and ETags
change chronologically in the reported XML document order.
A.3. Indicating XCAP Component Contents
Lastly, the XCAP diff format can also indicate the existing full
contents of XCAP components, i.e., elements or attributes:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<d:xcap-diff xmlns:d="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<d:attribute sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/@id"
>bar</d:attribute>
<d:element sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/*/foo"
><foo>this is a new element</foo></d:element>
</d:xcap-diff>
Note that the HTTP ETag value of the new document is not shown as it
is irrelevant for this use-case.
Then Joe's XCAP client removes the "id" attribute:
DELETE /tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/@id HTTP/1.1
Host: xcap.example.com
....
Content-Length: 0
And the XCAP diff document may then be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xcap-diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xcap-diff"
xcap-root="http://xcap.example.com/">
<attribute sel="tests/users/sip:joe@example.com/index/~~/doc/@id"
exists="0"/>
</xcap-diff>
This indicates that the subscribed attribute was removed from the
document. The element content in this use-case may be discarded from
the XCAP diff document, for example, when the size of XCAP diff
document would be impractically large to the transport layer.
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 23
RFC 5874 XCAP Diff Format May 2010
Authors' Addresses
Jonathan Rosenberg
jdrosen.net
Monmouth, NJ
US
EMail: jdrosen@jdrosen.net
URI: http://www.jdrosen.net
Jari Urpalainen
Nokia
Itamerenkatu 11-13
Helsinki 00180
Finland
Phone: +358 7180 37686
EMail: jari.urpalainen@nokia.com
Rosenberg & Urpalainen Standards Track PAGE 24
An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document Format for Indicating a Change in XML Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP) Resources
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 49509 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, May 20th, 2010
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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