The purpose of this part of ISO/IEC TR 10000 is to provide principles and a classification scheme for OSI profiles which may be or have been submitted for ratification as International Standardized Profiles (ISPs).¹

ISO/IEC TR 10000-1 defines the concept of profiles which are documented in ISPs. OSI profiles are a subset of OSE profiles. ISO/IEC TR 10000-3 defines the concept of OSE profiles and, along with ISO/IEC TR 10000-1, gives guidance to organizations making proposals for Draft ISPs, on the nature and content of the documents they are producing.

The existence of a profile classification in this part of ISO/IEC TR 10000 does not reflect a judgment by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SGFS that a profile is required for such capability. It merely provides a capability to identify uniquely such a function and to enable evaluation of PDISPs.

Since profiles will be proposed according to needs identified to SGFS and according to the progress of international base standardization, the Taxonomy will be periodically updated or have new parts added in order to reflect the progress reached. It is also recognized that there will be proposals for the extension of the Taxonomy to cover functions which were not identified during preparation of this edition of ISO/IEC TR 10000. These extensions may be identified by a variety of proposers and involve simple extensions to the existing Taxonomy or the addition of new functional areas not currently covered by ISO/IEC TR 10000. The inclusion of such extensions is administered following the procedures elaborated by SGFS.

A distinction has been made between a profile and an ISP documenting one or more profiles. The Taxonomy is only concerned with profiles, but further information is given in the “Directory of ISPs and Profiles contained therein” as to which ISP contains the documentation of a profile.

This Directory is maintained as an SGFS standing document SD-4 (see Annex A). For each draft profile submitted to SGFS, it will also provide additional information, including the status of the identified profiles.

¹ This part of ISO/IEC TR 10000 defines only a taxonomy for OSI based communication profiles; the issue of the placement of other communication profiles is not addressed.