Permanent spots for schemas

[johnpwack]

I'm planning on added subdirectories to https://vote.nist.gov to serve as permanent spots and name spaces for the 1500-1XX schemas, as follows:

vote.nist.gov/cdf/1500-100
vote.nist.gov/cdf/1500-101
...

And schemas would be named by version number, as they are now. I'd like to do this today if possible but I'll wait to see if anyone has any better suggestions.

[carl3]

Looks good to me. I assume there are version-specific documents in the directories? Can you give an example of a reference, e.g. I presume you might include the URL to a versioned .xsd file in one of the examples above as the xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="" attribute of the <ElectionReport>?

[johnpwack]

Setting this up inside of NIST has become a little more complicated in that I have to use a different system, so I think the URL would be more or less:

midas.nist.gov/...../cdf/1500-100/v1/schema-name.xsd
midas.nist.gov/...../cdf/1500-100/v2/schema-name.xsd
midas.nist.gov/...../cdf/1500-XXX/v1/schema-name.xsd

The "....." would be replaced by whatever path the system owners have set up. The version number would be in the URL and not the schema name; an example of the XML is:

<xsd:schema xmlns="http://midas.nist.gov/...../cdf/2500-100/v2/NIST_election_results.xsd" xmlns:ds="http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://midas.nist.gov/...../cdf/2500-100/v2/NIST_election_results.xsd" elementFormDefault="qualified" version="1.0">

We should probably name the schema with the spec number, e.g., "NIST_1500_100_election_results.xsd".

Sam, hopefully this is what you are thinking as well - let me know if you think otherwise.

[carl3]

The /v#/ directory and NIST_name.xsd look good (I assume you meant 1500 instead of 2500)

In my opinion, the prefix "midas.nist.gov/....." is almost guaranteed to be non-permanent. I think it is highly likely some future IT person will reorganize machines or directories and break all the URLs. (It happens a lot.)

The whole point of a separate virtual domain and root path (vote.nist.gov/cdf/) is so the mapped machine and storage area can be changed around, and it doesn't affect URIs. If your NIST department cannot support a virtual domain, I suggest something outside, even if it just redirects into midas or whatever.

One of the requirements that must be signed off by whatever hosting department is that the domain name and root path be supported in perpetuity (at least 100 years) and may never be changed. {Supported in perpetuity could be accomplished by redirects to some future web alternative.)