This document contains terminology and abbreviations that are used in other
CC/PP documents. For a detailed description of CC/PP, please see [CC/PP].
This document is a working draft made available by the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) for discussion only. This indicates no endorsement of its
content. This is the first public working draft, and work in progress,
representing the current consensus of the working group,
and future updates and changes are likely.
The working group is part of the W3C Mobile Access activity.
Continued status of the work is reported on the CC/PP Working Group Home Page (Member-only link).
It incorporates suggestions resulting from reviews and active participation
by members of the IETF CONNEG working group and the WAP Forum UAprof drafting
committee.
Please send comments and feedback to www-mobile@w3.org.
A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be
found at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
Table of Contents
1. Terminology
2. Abbreviations
3. References
The key words "MUST," "MUST NOT," "SHOULD," "SHOULD NOT," "MAY," and "MAY
NOT" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].
The following terms are used in this document.
- Anonymization
- Hiding the identity of the user as a security precaution.
- Assurance of origin
- Information provided to the receiver of a
message that allows it to be certain of the origin of the message. (This
assurance may not be sufficient to convince any other party about the
origin of the message.)
- Assurance of receipt
- Information provided to the sender of a message
that allows it to be certain that the message was delivered to its
intended recipient. This is not necessarily a proof of receipt.
- Attributes
- A CC/PP attribute refers to the data elements describing the profile and is denoted as an RDF property. Each
CC/PP attribute is associated with a value or a list of values or
resources.
- Authentication
- Some communication process that provides definite and tamper-proof
information about the identity of a communicating party.
- Authorization
- Permission to view or modify a data
resource, or to perform some other action. Authorization is usually
granted to an identified entity, and thus depends on authentication of the party performing the
action.
- CC/PP Repository
- A server that stores the user agent
profile or profile segments persistently in a
form that may be referenced by and incorporated into a profile. A CC/PP
repository is typically a Web server that provides CC/PP profiles or profile segments in response to HTTP requests.
- Cacheable
- A data resource is said to be "cacheable"
if the data resource contains a property
that allows a sever to determine whether the cached resource matches a
request for a similar resource.
- Cache
- A storage area used by a server or proxy to store
data resources that have been retrieved or
created in response to a request. When a new request for a "cached" data resource is received, the server or proxy can respond with the cached version instead of
retrieving or creating a new copy.
- Capability
- An attribute of a sender or receiver (often
the receiver) which indicates an ability to
generate or process a particular type of message content. See also "Attributes".
- Channel security
- A form of security (authentication and/or confidentiality) that operates on a given
communication channel, regardless of the information that is transferred
over that channel. The security thus provided is
between the end-points of the channel only.
- Client
- An entity that is the original compositor of a CC/PP profile.
- Confidentiality
- Protecting the content of a message from unauthorized disclosure.
- Content Generation
- For the purpose of this specification, "content generation" refers to
generating content appropriate to the user
agent profile of the request by using the user agent profile as input to a dynamic content generation engine. The XSL
and style sheets of the document are used to
tailor the document to the user agent profile of the request.
- Content Negotiation
- The mechanism for selecting the appropriate representation when
servicing a request. The representation of entities in any response can
be negotiated (including error responses).
- Content Selection
- For the purpose of this specification, "content selection" refers to
selecting an appropriate document from a list of
possible choices or variants by matching the document profile with the user agent profile of the request.
- Content Provider
- A server that originates content in response to a request.
- Data Resource
- A data object that can be transferred across a network. Data resources
may be available in multiple representations (e.g. multiple languages,
data formats, size, resolutions) or vary in other ways.
- Document
- For the purpose of this specification, "document" refers to content
supplied in response to a request. Using this definition, a "document"
may be a collection of smaller "documents", which in turn is a part of a
greater "document".
- Document Profile
- Document profiles offer a means to characterize the features appropriate to given categories of user
agents. For instance, one profile might include
support for style sheets, vector graphics and scripting, while another
might be restricted to the tags in HTML 3.2. Document profiles can be
used by servers to select between document variants developed for different user agent
categories. They can be used to determine what transformations to apply
when such variants are not available. Content
developers can use document profiles to ensure that their web sites will
be rendered as intended.
- Dynamic Content
- Content that is generated in response to a request. This may be used
for content that depends on changing environmental factors such as time
(e.g., stock quotes) or place (e.g., nearby gas stations)
- Feature
- Functional property of a device or entity.
- Gateway
- Software that is capable of bridging disparate network protocols. For
the purposes of this specification, "gateway" refers to protocol
bridging functionality, which may exist in a stand-alone gateway or may
be co-located with a proxy or origin server.
- Hint
- A suggestion or preference for a particular
option. While this option is strongly recommended, its use is not
required.
- Integrity
- Procedures applied to ensure that information is not corrupted in
transit. Different integrity procedures may protect against accidental
or intentional corruption of data.
- Machine Understandable
- Data that is described with tags that associate a meaning to the data
(i.e., an "author" tag would describe the author of the document), allowing data to be searched or combined
and not just displayed.
- Namespace
- A qualifier added to an XML tag to ensure uniqueness among XML
elements.
- Negotiate Content
- Message content that has been selected by content negotiation.
- Negotiation Metadata
- Information which is exchanged between the sender and the receiver of a message by content negotiation in order to determine
the variant which should be transferred.
- Non-repudiation
- This term has been the subject of much dispute. Broadly speaking, it
is a process that prevents a party to a communication from subsequently
denying that the communication took place, or from denying the content
of the communication. Sometimes this term is used in a purely technical
sense (e.g. generation of data that is dependent on the communication
and its content) and sometimes in a legal sense (i.e. evidence that
could be sustained in a court of law).
- Non-Repudiation of Origin
- The ability of the receiver to verify the
source of the information.
- Non-Repudiation of Receipt
- The ability of the sender to verify that the intended recipient
received the information.
- Non-variant Content
- When the form/format of the content being sent does not depend on receiver's capabilities and/or preferences
- Object security
- A form of security (authentication and/or confidentiality) that operates on an item of
data (a object), regardless of the communication channel over which it
is passed. Object security can apply to data that is passed over several
different data channels in succession, but cannot be used to protect
message addressing and other transfer-related information.
- Origin Server
- Software that can respond to requests by delivering appropriate
content or error messages. The origin server may receive requests via
either WSP or HTTP. Application programs executing on the origin server
deliver content that is tailored in accordance with the CC/PP that can
be found within the provided profile. For the
purpose of this specification, "origin server" refers to content generation capabilities, which may
physically exist in a stand-alone Web server or may be co-located with a
proxy or gateway.
- Preference
- An attribute of a sender or receiver (often
the receiver) which indicates a preference to
generate or process one particular type of message content over another,
even if both are possible.
- Privacy
- Preventing the unintended or unauthorized disclosure of information
about a person. Such information may be contained within a message, but
may also be inferred from patterns of communication; e.g. when
communications happen, the types of resource accessed, the parties
withwhom communication occurs, etc.
- Profile
- An instance of the schema that describe
capabilities for a specific device and network. A profile need not have
all the attributes identified in the vocabulary/schema.
- Proof of receipt, or Proof of delivery
- Information provided to the sender of a message that allows them to
prove subsequently to a third party that the message was delivered to
its intended recipient. (This proof may not necessarily be legally
sustainable.)
- Proxy
- Software that receives HTTP requests and forwards that request toward
the origin server (possibly by way of an
upstream proxy) using HTTP. The proxy receives the response from the origin server and forwards it to the requesting
client. In providing its forwarding functions, the proxy may modify
either the request or response or provide other value-added functions.
For the purposes of this specification, "proxy" refers to
request/response forwarding functionality, which may exist in a
stand-alone HTTP proxy or may be co-located with a gateway or origin server.
- RDF Resource
- An object or element being described by RDF expressions is a resource.
An RDF resource is identified by a URI.
- Receiver
- A system component (device or program) which receives a message.
- Receiver-initiated
Transmission
- A message transmission which is requested by the eventual receiver of the message. Sometimes described as
"pull" messaging. E.g. an HTTP GET operation.
- Schema
- An RDF schema denotes resources which constitute the particular
unchanging versions of an RDF vocabulary at
any point in time. It is used to provide semantic information (such as
organization and relationship) about the interpretation of the
statements in an RDF data model. It does not include the values
associated with the attributes.
- Security
- Describes a set of procedures applied to data communications to ensure
that information is transferred exactly as the sender and receiver intend, and in no other way. Security
generally breaks down into integrity, authentication, confidentiality and Privacy.
- Sender
- A system component (device or program) which transmits a message.
- Sender-initiated
transmission
- A message transmission which is invoked by the sender of the message.
Sometimes described as "push" messaging. E.g. sending an email.
- User
- An individual or group of individuals acting as a single entity. The
user is further qualified as an entity who uses a device to request
content and/or resource from a server.
- User agent
- A program, such as a browser, running on the device that acts on a user's behalf. Users may use
different user agents at different times.
- User Agent Profile
- Capabilities and preference Information
pertaining to the capabilities of the device, the operating and network
environment, and users personal preferences for receiving content and/or
resource.
- Variant
- One of several possible representations of a data resource.
- Variant Content
- When the form/format of the content being sent depends on receiver's capabilities and/or preferences
- Vocabulary
- A collection of attributes that adequately describe the CC/PP. A
vocabulary is associated with a schema.
CC/PP |
Composite Capabilities/Preferences Profile |
CC/PPex |
CC/PP Exchange Protocol |
CONNEG |
Content Negotiation Working Group in the IETF |
ER |
Entity-Relationship |
HTML |
Hyper Text Markup Language |
HTTP |
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol |
HTTPex |
HTTP Extension Framework |
IANA |
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority |
IETF |
Internet Engineering Task Force |
IOTP |
Internet Open Trading Protocol |
LDAP |
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol |
OTA |
Over The Air, i.e. in the radio network |
P3P |
Project for Platform for Privacy Preferences |
RDF |
Resource Description Framework |
RFC |
Request For Comments |
TBD |
To Be Determined |
TCP/IP |
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol |
UAProf |
User Agent Profile |
W3C |
World Wide Web Consortium |
WAP |
Wireless Application Protocol |
WBXML |
WAP Binary XML |
WML |
Wireless Markup Language |
WSP |
Wireless Session Protocol |
XHTML |
Extensible Hyper-Text Markup Language |
XSL |
Extensible Style Language |
XML |
Extensible Markup Language |
[CC/PP] Composite Capability/Preference
Profiles (CC/PP): A user side framework for content negotiation
[RDF] Resource Description Framework,
(RDF) Model and Syntax Specification
[RFC2119] RFC 2119 : Key words for use in
RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels
[XML] Extensible Markup Language
(XML) 1.0