XRI

Draft

Introduction

I-names are one form of an XRI (see below) and represent a unique name for a person or an organization. I-names are related to unique I-numbers (i.e. the equivalent of IP addresses for humans).

“XRIs are a new kind of identifier on the Internet, similar to URLs or e-mail addresses. However, a single XRI can be used for different services, such as a website, e-mail, skype, icq or any other. They are therefore neither website nor e-mail addresses alone; they can be both at the same time, and more.” (@fullXRI, retrieved 22:19, 23 February 2010).

The advantage of i-name is that a user can control what kind of information what kind of service or agent can access. e.g. one may give or not give permission to tranlate an i-name into an email-address. XDI (retrieved 21:35, 23 February 2010) explains the advantage of I-Names in the following way: “Conventional addresses such as postal addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses are tied to a specific location, device, or service. By contrast, i-names are abstract—they are not tied to any specific location or device. Instead they are a way to ask permission to contact an individual or organization—and for the i-name owner to control to whom this permission is granted. [...] An i-name is simply unspammable — you can’t send it email, call it, or send it a fax directly unless the owner has given you permission.”.

See also: OpenID. XRI and i-names are (being) integrated into the OpenID framework.

The XRI standard

XRI is a standard that defines a fairly abstract concept for defining various identity schemes like i-cards, i-names, i-numbers and OpenID. XRI stands for EXtensible Resource Identifier and has been developed by OASIS as “a standard for a high-level naming/identification system for individuals, businesses, communities, services and data on the Internet. XRI, along with XDI, a general-purpose data interchange protocol based on XRI, were developed to create the "Dataweb," which enables the Web to operate like a global database.” (ZDNet, retrieved 22:19, 23 February 2010). XRI's are also an option for OpenID user names. I-names are unique humain readable names, but they may change over time for a given subject. I-numbers are machine readable identifiers and should remain persistent. I.e. an application would both remember the i-name and the i-number. The latter should always point to the same person, even when the i-name changes.

• The XRI Identifiers (I-Names and I-numbers) are administered by XDI.org. I.e. XDI.org accredits I-Brokers. You can find these on the i-broker page page of inames.net

Examples

What do XRIs look like?

Simple XRIs are understood by applications that can handle these. They start with either a = or a @ character, and after that can be made up of an arbitrary number of 'subsegments', which are usually separated by a * character.

• = identifiers refer to names of individuals
• @ identifiers refer to names of organizations

Examples of individuals:

• =daniel.k.schneider
• =danielkschneider (not recommended)
• =daniel-schneider (not recommended)

Examples of organizational names:

• @example.company.name

Examples of subentities in organizations (so-called community i-names)

• @example.company.name*division*sub-division
• @tecfa*daniel.schneider
• @blog*lucy

Full (absolute) XRIs are a kind of URI and may look like this:

• xri://=daniel.k.schneider

Such URLs are not yet understood by current web browsers. (22:19, 23 February 2010)

Since XRIs are a kind of URIs (i.e. more poweful than URLs, one can append extra arguments to an XRI (I don't know yet what would be standardized - Daniel K. Schneider). Example:

• =daniel.k.schneider(+blog)

Dealing with XRIs in todays webbrowsers

“Today, webbrowsers and operating systems do not yet natively support XRI resolution. In order to work with XRI technology, you either need to use special XRI-enabled software such as webbrowser plugins or our XRI Ping tool, or you can let public XRI proxies resolve your XRI.”(@fullXRI, retrieved 22:19, 23 February 2010).

“To use an XRI proxy, you need to form a so-called HXRI, which is an XRI prepended with the URL of a HTTP-based XRI proxy server. The proxy server will then perform the XRI resolution for you and redirect you to the appropriate target URI. XRI proxy servers usually begin with http://xri..”(@fullXRI, retrieved 22:19, 23 February 2010).

• http://xri.net/, operated by XDI.org - the organization behind the XRI standard.
• http://xri.fullxri.com/, proxy of a certified i-names registrar.

Life examples for DKS

I got the =daniel.k.schneider i-name with @fullXRI ($12/year) and now can use URLs like this:

• http://xri.net/=daniel.k.schneider (will resolve to the current home page of DKS)
• http://xri.fullxri.com/=daniel.k.schneider (same as above)

• http://xri.net/=daniel.k.schneider/(+contact) (will resolve to a short contact page, that doesn't give any URL or e-mail address)

• http://xri.net/=daniel.k.schneider/(+blog) (will resolve to the favorite blog of DKS)

Using the free @freeXRI:

• http://xri.net/@id*daniel.schneider (this one will redirect to my wiki user page)

Links

i-name registrars

• @fullXRI
• 1id
• @freeXRI allows to create a free XRI of the kind: @free*yourname, @id*yourname, =web*yourname, etc.

XRI resolvers

• Use http://xri.net/ and just append the i-name, e.g. like http://xri.net/=daniel.k.schneider

Organizations

• OASIS is a major player for XML-related standards. With respect to digital identity: SAML, XDI, XRI etc. See also the XRI committee, Web Services Security (WSS) Technical Committee, eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) Technical Committee, etc.

• XDI.org (manages XRI spaces), i.e. through inames.net (the XDI.org portal for i-names)

Technical information

• inames wiki, community wiki for XRI and i-names developers.
  • E.g. Why XRI ?

• OASIS XRI FAQ

• XRI and OpenID

Some Wikipedia articles

• Wikipedia Digital Identity
• i-name (Wikipedia)
• I-number (Wikipedia)
• I-broker (Wikipedia)
• XRI (Wikipedia)
• XRDS (Wikipedia)
• XDI (Wikipedia)