namespace

Definition

In an identity system, an identifier can be generalized to a namespace to provide a systematic way of organizing identifiers for related resources and their attributes. A namespace is a grouping of symbols or identifiers for a set of related objects.

A namespace employs some scheme for assigning identifiers to the elements of the namespace. A simple name-spacing scheme uses a prefix or prefixes in a hierarchical fashion to compose identifiers. The following is an example of a namespace scheme for addresses within the USA that uses a hierarchy of prefixes:

state.county.city.zip.street.number.

An example element in this namespace may be identified with the following:

utah.wasatch.heber.84032.main.150S.