draft-young-md-query.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?rfc toc="yes"?>
<?rfc symrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc sortrefs="yes"?>
<?rfc compact="yes"?>
<?rfc subcompact="no" ?>
<?rfc linkmailto="no" ?>
<?rfc editing="no" ?>
<?rfc comments="yes" ?>
<?rfc inline="yes"?>
<?rfc rfcedstyle="yes"?>
<?rfc-ext allow-markup-in-artwork="yes" ?>
<?rfc-ext include-index="no" ?>

<rfc ipr="trust200902" docName="draft-young-md-query-21" submissionType="independent" category="info"
    xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
    <front>
        <title>Metadata Query Protocol</title>

        <author initials="I.A." fullname="Ian A. Young" surname="Young" role="editor">
            <organization>Independent</organization>
            <address>
                <email>ian@iay.org.uk</email>
            </address>
        </author>

        <date/>

        <keyword>metadata</keyword>
        <keyword>web service</keyword>

        <abstract>
            <t>
                This document defines a simple protocol for retrieving metadata about named entities, or named
                collections of entities.
                The goal of the protocol is to profile various aspects of HTTP to allow requesters to rely on
                certain, rigorously defined, behaviour.
            </t>
            <t>
                This document is a product of the Research and Education Federations (REFEDS) Working Group process.
            </t>
        </abstract>

        <note title="Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor before publication)">
            <t>
                Discussion of this draft takes place on the MDX
                mailing list (mdx@lists.iay.org.uk), which is accessed from
                <xref target="MDX.list"/>.
            </t>
            <t>
                XML versions, latest edits and the issues list for this document
                are available from <xref target="md-query"/>.
            </t>
            <t>
                The changes in this draft are summarized in <xref target="latest.changes"/>.
            </t>
        </note>

    </front>

    <middle>
        <section title="Introduction">
            <t>
                Many clients of web-based services are capable of consuming descriptive metadata about a service in
                order to customize or obtain information about the client's connection parameters.  While the form of
                the metadata (e.g., JSON, XML) and content varies between services this document specifies a set of
                semantics for HTTP (<xref target="RFC7230"/> et seq.)
                that allow clients to rely on certain behavior.
                The defined behavior is meant to make it easy for clients to perform queries, to be efficient for
                both requesters and responders, and to allow the responder to scale in various ways.
            </t>
            <t>
                The Research and Education Federations group (<xref target="REFEDS"/>)
                is the voice that articulates the mutual needs of research and education
                identity federations worldwide. It aims to represent the requirements of
                research and education in the ever-growing space of access and identity
                management.
            </t>
            <t>
                From time to time REFEDS
                will wish to publish a document in the Internet RFC series.  Such
                documents will be published as part of the RFC Independent Submission
                Stream <xref target="RFC4844"/>; however the REFEDS working group sign-off process will
                have been followed for these documents, as described in
                the <xref target="REFEDS.agreement">REFEDS Participant's Agreement</xref>.
            </t>
            <t>
                This document is a product of the REFEDS Working Group process.
            </t>

            <section title="Notation and Conventions">
                <t>
                    The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
                    NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED",
                    "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as
                    described in BCP&#160;14 <xref target="RFC2119"/> <xref target="RFC8174"/>
                    when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
                </t>
                <t>
                    This document makes use of the Augmented BNF metalanguage defined in <xref target="STD68"/>.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Terminology">
                <t>
                    <list style="hanging">
                        <t hangText="entity:">
                            A single logical construct for which metadata may be asserted. Generally this is a
                            network accessible service.
                        </t>
                        <t hangText="metadata:">
                            A machine readable description of certain entity characteristics. Generally metadata
                            provides information such as end point references, service contact information, etc.
                        </t>
                    </list>
                </t>
            </section>
        </section>
        <section title="Protocol Transport">
            <t>The metadata query protocol seeks to fully employ the features of the HTTP protocol. Additionally this specification makes mandatory some optional HTTP features.</t>

            <section title="Transport Protocol" anchor="transport_protocol">
                <t>
                    The metadata query protocol makes use of the HTTP protocol (<xref target="RFC7230"/>)
                    to transmit requests and responses.
                    The underlying HTTP connection MAY make use of any appropriate transport protocol.
                    In particular, the HTTP connection MAY make use of either TCP or TLS at the transport layer.
                    See the <xref target="sec_cons" format="title"/> section for guidance in choosing an
                    appropriate transport protocol.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="HTTP Version" anchor="http_version">
                <t>
                    Requests from clients MUST NOT use an HTTP version prior to version 1.1.
                    Responders MUST reply to such requests using status code 505, "HTTP Version Not Supported".
                </t>
                <t>
                    Protocol responders MUST support requests using HTTP version 1.1, and MAY support later versions.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="HTTP Method">
                <t>All metadata query requests MUST use the GET method.</t>
            </section>
            <section title="Request Headers">
                <t>
                    All metadata query requests MUST include the following HTTP headers:
                    <list>
                        <t>
                            Accept - this header MUST contain the content-type identifying the type, or form,
                            of metadata to be retrieved.
                            See section 5.3.2 of <xref target="RFC7231"/>.
                        </t>
                    </list>
                </t>
                <t>
                    All metadata query requests SHOULD include the following HTTP headers:
                    <list>
                        <t>Accept-Charset, see section 5.3.3 of <xref target="RFC7231"/></t>
                        <t>Accept-Encoding, see section 5.3.4 of <xref target="RFC7231"/></t>
                    </list>
                </t>
                <t>
                    A metadata request to the same URL, after an initial request, MUST include the following header:
                    <list>
                        <t>If-None-Match, see section 3.2 of <xref target="RFC7232"/>.</t>
                    </list>
                </t>
            </section>
            <section title="Response Headers">
                <t>
                    All successful metadata query responses (even those that return no results) MUST include the following headers:
                    <list>
                        <t>
                            Content-Encoding - required if, and only if, content is compressed.
                            See section 3.1.2.2 of <xref target="RFC7231"/>.
                        </t>
                        <t>Content-Type, see section 3.1.1.5 of <xref target="RFC7231"/>.</t>
                        <t>ETag, see section 2.3 of <xref target="RFC7232"/>.</t>
                    </list>
                </t>
                <t>
                    All metadata retrieval responses SHOULD include the following headers:
                    <list>
                        <t>Cache-Control, see section 5.2 of <xref target="RFC7234"/>.</t>
                        <t>Content-Length, see section 3.3.2 of <xref target="RFC7230"/></t>
                        <t>Last-Modified, see section 2.2 of <xref target="RFC7232"/>.</t>
                    </list>
                </t>
            </section>
            <section title="Status Codes">
                <t>
                    This protocol uses the following HTTP status codes:
                    <list>
                        <t>200 "OK" - standard response code when returning requested metadata</t>
                        <t>304 "Not Modified" - response code indicating requested metadata has not been updated since the last request</t>
                        <t>400 "Bad Request" - response code indicating that the requester's request was malformed in some fashion</t>
                        <t>401 "Unauthorized" - response code indicating the request must be authenticated before requesting metadata</t>
                        <t>404 "Not Found" - indicates that the requested metadata could not be found; this MUST NOT be used in order to indicate a general service error.</t>
                        <t>405 "Method Not Allowed" - response code indicating that a non-GET method was used</t>
                        <t>406 "Not Acceptable" - response code indicating that metadata is not available in the request content-type</t>
                        <t>505 "HTTP Version Not Supported" - response code indicating that HTTP/1.1 was not used</t>
                    </list>
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Base URL" anchor="base.url">
                <t>
                    Requests defined in this document are performed by issuing an HTTP GET request to a
                    particular URL (<xref target="STD66"/>).
                    The final component of the path to which requests are issued is defined
                    by the requests specified within this document.
                    A base URL precedes such paths. Such a base URL:
                    <list style="symbols">
                        <t>MUST contain the scheme and authority components.</t>
                        <t>MUST contain a path component ending with a slash ('/') character.</t>
                        <t>MUST NOT include a query component.</t>
                        <t>MUST NOT include a fragment identifier component.</t>
                    </list>
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Content Negotiation">
                <t>As there may be many representations for a given piece of metadata, agent-driven content negotiation is used to ensure the proper representation is delivered to the requester. In addition to the required usage of the Accept header a responder SHOULD also support the use of the Accept-Charset header.</t>
            </section>
        </section>

        <section title="Metadata Query Protocol" anchor="protocol">
            <t>
                The metadata query protocol retrieves metadata
                either for all entities known to the responder or for a named collection
                based on a single "tag" or "keyword" identifier.
                A request returns information for none, one, or a collection of entities.
            </t>

            <section title="Identifiers" anchor="sec_identifiers">
                <t>
                    The query protocol uses identifiers to "tag" metadata for single- and multi-entity metadata collections.
                    The assignment of such identifiers to a particular metadata document is the responsibility of the query
                    responder.
                    If a metadata collection already contains a well known identifier it is RECOMMENDED that such a natural
                    identifier is used when possible.
                    Any given metadata collection MAY have more than one identifier associated with it.
                </t>
                <t>
                    An identifier used in the query protocol is a non-empty sequence of
                    arbitrary 8-bit characters:
                </t>
                <figure>
                    <artwork type="abnf"><![CDATA[
id       = 1*idchar
idchar   = %x00-ff ; any encodable character
]]></artwork>
                </figure>
            </section>

            <section title="Protocol">

                <section title="Request by Identifier" anchor="protocol.request.identifier">
                    <t>
                        A metadata query request for all entities tagged with a particular identifier is
                        performed by issuing an HTTP GET request to a URL constructed as the concatenation
                        of the following components:
                        <list style="symbols">
                            <t>The responder's base URL.</t>
                            <t>The string "entities/".</t>
                            <t>
                                A single identifier, percent-encoded appropriately
                                for use as a URL path segment
                                (see sections 2.1 and 3.3 of <xref target="STD66"/>).
                            </t>
                        </list>
                    </t>
                    <t>
                        For example, with a base URL of <tt>http://example.org/mdq/</tt>, a query for the
                        identifier <tt>foo</tt> would be performed by an HTTP GET request to the
                        following URL:
                    </t>
                    <figure>
                        <artwork><![CDATA[
http://example.org/mdq/entities/foo
                        ]]></artwork>
                    </figure>
                    <t>
                        Correct encoding of the identifier as a URL path segment
                        is critical for interoperability. In particular:
                        <list>
                            <t>The character '/' MUST be percent-encoded.</t>
                            <t>
                                The space character MUST be encoded as '%20'
                                and MUST NOT be encoded as '+' as would be
                                required in a query parameter.
                            </t>
                        </list>
                    </t>
                    <t>
                        For example, with a base URL of <tt>http://example.org/mdq/</tt>, a query for the
                        identifier "<tt>blue/green+light blue</tt>" would be performed by an HTTP GET request to the
                        following URL:
                    </t>
                    <figure>
                        <artwork><![CDATA[
http://example.org/mdq/entities/blue%2Fgreen+light%20blue
                        ]]></artwork>
                    </figure>
                </section>

                <section title="Request All Entities" anchor="protocol.request.all">
                    <t>
                        A metadata query request for all entities known to the responder is performed by
                        issuing an HTTP GET request to a URL constructed as the concatenation of the
                        following components:
                        <list style="symbols">
                            <t>The responder's base URL.</t>
                            <t>The string "entities".</t>
                        </list>
                    </t>
                    <t>
                        For example, with a base URL of <tt>http://example.org/mdq/</tt>, a query for
                        all entities would be performed by an HTTP GET request to the
                        following URL:
                    </t>
                    <figure>
                        <artwork><![CDATA[
http://example.org/mdq/entities
                        ]]></artwork>
                    </figure>
                </section>

                <section title="Response" anchor="protocol.response">
                    <t>
                        The response to a metadata query request MUST be a document that provides metadata for the given
                        request in the format described by the request's Accept header.
                    </t>
                    <t>
                        The responder is responsible for ensuring that the metadata returned is valid. If the responder can not
                        create a valid document it MUST respond with a 406 status code.  An example of such an error would be
                        the case where the result of the query is metadata for multiple entities but the request content type
                        does not support returning multiple results in a single document.
                    </t>
                </section>

                <section title="Example Request and Response" anchor="query.example">
                    <t>
                        The following example demonstrates a metadata query request using a base URL
                        of <tt>http://metadata.example.org/service/</tt> and the
                        identifier <tt>http://example.org/idp</tt>.
                        <figure title="Example Metadata Query Request">
                            <artwork><![CDATA[
GET /service/entities/http:%2F%2Fexample.org%2Fidp HTTP/1.1
Host: metadata.example.org
Accept: application/samlmetadata+xml
                            ]]></artwork>
                        </figure>
                        <figure title="Example Metadata Query Response">
                            <artwork><![CDATA[
HTTP/1.x 200 OK
Content-Type: application/samlmetadata+xml
ETag: "abcdefg"
Last-Modified: Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:45:26 GMT
Content-Length: 1234

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EntityDescriptor entityID="http://example.org/idp"
    xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:2.0:metadata">
....
                            ]]></artwork>
                        </figure>
                    </t>
                </section>
            </section>
        </section>

        <section title="Efficient Retrieval and Caching">

            <section title="Conditional Retrieval" anchor="retrieval.conditional">
                <t>
                    Upon a successful response the responder MUST return an ETag header and MAY return a Last-Modified header as well.
                    Requesters SHOULD use either or both, with the ETag being preferred, in any subsequent requests for the same resource.
                </t>
                <t>
                    In the event that a resource has not changed since the previous request, the responder SHOULD send
                    a 304 (Not Modified) status code as a response.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Content Caching">
                <t>Responders SHOULD include cache control information with successful (200 status code) responses, assuming the responder knows when retrieved metadata is meant to expire.  The responder SHOULD also include cache control information with 404 Not Found responses.  This allows the requester to create and maintain a negative-response cache.  When cache controls are used only the 'max-age' directive SHOULD be used.</t>
            </section>
            <section title="Content Compression">
                <t>As should be apparent from the required request and response headers this protocol encourages the use of content compression.  This is in recognition that some metadata documents can be quite large or fetched with relatively high frequency.</t>
                <t>Requesters SHOULD support, and advertise support for, gzip compression unless such usage would put exceptional demands on constrained environments. Responders MUST support gzip compression.  Requesters and responders MAY support other compression algorithms.</t>
            </section>
        </section>

        <section title="Protocol Extension Points" anchor="sec_protocol_extension_points">
            <t>
                The Metadata Query Protocol is extensible using the following protocol extension points:
                <list style="symbols">
                    <t>
                        Profiles of this specification may assign semantics to specific identifiers,
                        or to identifiers structured in particular ways.
                    </t>
                    <t>
                        Profiles of this specification may define additional paths
                        (other than <tt>entities</tt>
                        and <tt>entities/</tt>) below the base URL.
                    </t>
                </list>
            </t>
        </section>

        <section title="Security Considerations" anchor="sec_cons">
            <section title="Integrity">
                <t>As metadata often contains information necessary for the secure operation of interacting services it is RECOMMENDED that some form of content integrity checking be performed. This may include the use of TLS at the transport layer, digital signatures present within the metadata document, or any other such mechanism.</t>
            </section>
            <section title="Confidentiality">
                <t>In many cases service metadata is public information and therefore confidentiality is not required.  In the cases where such functionality is required, it is RECOMMENDED that both the requester and responder support TLS.  Other mechanisms, such as XML encryption, MAY also be supported.</t>
            </section>
            <section title="Authentication">
                <t>
                    All responders which require client authentication to view retrieved information MUST support
                    the use of HTTP basic authentication (<xref target="RFC7235"/>,
                    <xref target="RFC7617"/>) over TLS.
                    Responders SHOULD also support the use of X.509 client certificate authentication.
                </t>
            </section>
        </section>

        <section title="IANA Considerations">
            <t>
                This document has no actions for IANA.
            </t>
        </section>

        <section title="Acknowledgements">
            <t>The editor would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to this document:
                <list>
                    <t>Scott Cantor (The Ohio State University)</t>
                    <t>Leif Johansson (SUNET)</t>
                    <t>Thomas Lenggenhager (SWITCH)</t>
                    <t>Joe St Sauver (University of Oregon)</t>
                    <t>Tom Scavo (Internet2)</t>
                </list>
            </t>
            <t>
                Special acknowledgement is due to Chad LaJoie (Covisint) for his work in editing
                previous versions of this specification.
            </t>
        </section>

    </middle>

    <back>
        <references title="Normative References">

            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.2119.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7230.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7231.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7232.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7234.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7235.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.7617.xml"/>
            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.8174.xml"/>

            <reference anchor="STD66" target="https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3986">
                <front>
                    <title>Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax</title>
                    <author initials="T." surname="Berners-Lee" fullname="T. Berners-Lee"/>
                    <author initials="R." surname="Fielding" fullname="R. Fielding"/>
                    <author initials="L." surname="Masinter" fullname="L. Masinter"/>
                    <date year="2005" month="January"/>
                </front>
                <seriesInfo name="STD" value="66"/>
                <seriesInfo name="RFC" value="3986"/>
                <seriesInfo name="DOI" value="10.17487/RFC3986"/>
            </reference>

            <reference anchor="STD68" target="https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234">
                <front>
                    <title>Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF</title>
                    <author initials="D." surname="Crocker" fullname="D. Crocker" role="editor"/>
                    <author initials="P." surname="Overell" fullname="P. Overell"/>
                    <date year="2008" month="January"/>
                </front>
                <seriesInfo name="STD" value="68"/>
                <seriesInfo name="RFC" value="5234"/>
                <seriesInfo name="DOI" value="10.17487/RFC5234"/>
            </reference>

        </references>

        <references title="Informative References">

            <xi:include
                href="https://xml2rfc.ietf.org/public/rfc/bibxml/reference.RFC.4844.xml"/>

            <reference anchor="REFEDS" target="http://www.refeds.org/">
                <front>
                    <title>REFEDS Home Page</title>
                    <author>
                        <organization>Research and Education Federations</organization>
                    </author>
                    <date/>
                </front>
            </reference>

            <reference anchor="REFEDS.agreement" target="https://refeds.org/about/about_agreement.html">
                <front>
                    <title>REFEDS Participant's Agreement</title>
                    <author>
                        <organization>Research and Education Federations</organization>
                    </author>
                    <date/>
                </front>
            </reference>

            <reference anchor="MDX.list" target="http://lists.iay.org.uk/listinfo.cgi/mdx-iay.org.uk">
                <front>
                    <title>MDX Mailing List</title>
                    <author initials="I.A." fullname="Ian A. Young" surname="Young" role="editor"/>
                    <date/>
                </front>
            </reference>

            <reference anchor="md-query" target="https://github.com/iay/md-query">
                <front>
                    <title>md-query Project</title>
                    <author initials="I.A." fullname="Ian A. Young" surname="Young" role="editor"/>
                    <date/>
                </front>
            </reference>

        </references>

        <section title="Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)" anchor="change.log">

            <section title="Since draft-lajoie-md-query-01" anchor="changes.since.draft-lajoie-md-query-01">
                <t>
                    Adopted as base for draft-young-md-query-00.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Updated author and list of contributors.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Changed ipr from "pre5378Trust200902" to "trust200902",
                    submission type from IETF to independent and
                    category from experimental to informational.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added empty IANA considerations section.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Minor typographical nits but (intentionally) no substantive
                    content changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-00" anchor="changes.since.draft-young-md-query-00">
                <t>
                    Split into two documents: this one is as agnostic as possible around questions such as
                    metadata format and higher level protocol use cases, a new layered document describes the
                    detailed requirements for SAML support.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Rewrite <xref target="protocol.request.identifier"/> to clarify construction of the
                    request URL and its relationship to the base URL.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added <xref target="transport_protocol"/> to clarify that the transport protocol underlying HTTP
                    may be either TCP or SSL/TLS.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Clarify position on <xref target="http_version">HTTP versions</xref> which may be used to underly this protocol.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added Change Log modelled on draft-ietf-httpbis-http2.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added a reference to <xref target="STD68"/>.
                    Use ABNF to describe request syntax.
                    Replace transformed identifier concept with extended identifiers (this also resulted in the removal
                    of any discussion of specific transformed identifier formats).
                    Add grammar to distinguish basic from extended identifiers.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Changed the required response when the result can not be validly expressed in the requested
                    format from 500 to 406.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Removed the '+' operator and all references to multiple identifiers in queries. If more complex queries
                    are required, these will be reintroduced at a different path under the base URL.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added a section describing <xref target="sec_protocol_extension_points" format="title"/>.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-01" anchor="changes.since.draft-young-md-query-01">
                <t>
                    Added REFEDS RFC stream boilerplate.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Tidied up some normative language.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-02" anchor="changes.since.draft-young-md-query-02">
                <t>
                    Introduced a normative reference to <xref target="STD66"/>.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Reworked the definition of the base URL so that a non-empty path ending with '/'
                    is required. This allows the definition of request URLs to be simplified.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Clarified the definition of the base URL to exclude a query component; corrected
                    the terminology for the fragment identifier component.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added the definition for the query for all entities in
                    <xref target="protocol.request.all"/>.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Corrected an example in <xref target="query.example"/> to include the
                    required double quotes in the value of an ETag header. Added text to clarify
                    the base URL and identifier being used in the example.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Simplified the definition of identifiers, so that any non-empty identifier
                    is accepted and no semantics are defined for particular structures. Extended
                    syntaxes such as the <tt>{sha1}</tt> notation for
                    transformed identifiers are now left to profiles.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Remove incidental references to SSL.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Remove status code 501 ("not implemented") as it is no longer referenced.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-03">
                <t>
                    Correct a typo in the identifier grammar.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-04">
                <t>
                    Updated to rely on the new definition of HTTP/1.1 in <xref target="RFC7230"/> et seq.
                    instead of RFC 2616.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Corrected <xref target="protocol.response"/> to indicate that the request
                    contains an Accept header, not a Content-Type header.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Added an Editorial Note to help direct readers
                    back to the discussion.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-05">
                <t>
                    Remove unnecessary percent-encoding of a ':' character in the
                    example in <xref target="query.example"/>.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Removed use of the ambiguous term "URL-encoded" in
                    <xref target="protocol.request.identifier"/>.
                    Instead, indicate that the encoding must correspond to the
                    rules for encoding a URL path segment specifically, and call
                    out some of the more important implications arising from that.
                    Added a new example illustrating these implications.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Updated the description of conditional retrieval in
                    <xref target="retrieval.conditional"/> to make the use
                    of a 304 (Not Modified) status code a normative but
                    non-mandatory obligation on the responder, not simply a
                    description of what the requester will receive.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-06">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-07">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-08">
                <t>
                    Modernise normative language to include <xref target="RFC8174"/>.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Reference <xref target="RFC7617"/> instead of the
                    Internet-Draft.
                </t>
                <t>
                    Improved references to RFCs.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-09">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-10">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-11">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-12">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-13">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-14">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-15">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-16">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-17">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-18">
                <t>
                    Formatting changes to allow rendering with <tt>xml2rfc</tt> version 3.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-19">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>

            <section title="Since draft-young-md-query-20" anchor="latest.changes">
                <t>
                    No substantive changes.
                </t>
            </section>
        </section>

    </back>
</rfc>