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[3.2] Profile identity & metadata #5

Description

@ozzyathome

Aspect

Section: 3.2 Profile identity & metadata
Orientation relevance: both

Every profile needs a name, a version number, and a few basic facts about it, who maintains it,
and whether it is a draft, published, or retired. Without these, people can't refer to a profile
precisely in a contract or a tool. This issue is used to agree what identifying information every profile
must carry.

Example

Just as you'd cite "ISO 9001:2015" rather than "that quality standard," a buyer should be able to
write "requires the Telecom Procurement Profile v1.2" in a tender and have everyone know exactly
what is meant — including that v1.3 later added a requirement and v1.1 is now retired.

Objective

Decide how profiles are named, identified, versioned, and described, so they are
unambiguously referenceable in contracts, tools, and regulatory documents.

Background & links

Scoping document §3.2. Identifier and namespacing choices here are reused by extensibility
(3.9) and overlap with governance/versioning (3.11). Prior art worth reviewing: Package URL
(purl) identifier conventions; SemVer.

Options under consideration

  • Namespaced identifier — reverse-DNS style (e.g. org.pkic.cbom.profile.procurement) so
    sector and organisation profiles cannot collide. (Trade-off: verbose; collision-safe.)
  • Registry-assigned short ID + human name — central allocation. (Trade-off: needs a
    registry; clean references.)
  • Versioning — SemVer with defined breaking-change criteria, versus date-based versioning.

Open questions

  • A naming and identifier scheme, including namespacing for sector/organisation profiles.
  • Versioning rules, and what counts as a breaking versus non-breaking change.
  • Required metadata: owner/author, status (draft / published / deprecated), publication date, applicable sectors or jurisdictions, base profile (if any).

Dependencies

Namespacing is reused by extensibility (3.9 #9); versioning/status coordinates with
governance (3.11 #11).

Decision

Not yet decided.

Impact on the specification

Spec section "Profile identity and metadata."

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