In DDI 3.2, the DDIAgencyIDType was:

[a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,63}(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,63})*

In DDI 3.3, the DDIAgencyIDType was restricted to:

[a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,63}(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]{1,63})+

This change requires agency ids in 3.3 to include a period and an additional extension to what was allowed in 3.2. There are many users who are not currently doing this.

While I understand that the new regex is inline with the agency ids that the DDI registry creates and the valid DDI agency id format, this restriction will create severe problems for some users when migrating from 3.2 to 3.3 that were relying on the prior regex validation. I also tried to find discussion of this change or a jira ticket, and could not find any discussion specific to this DDIAgencyIDType change.

Not only would this change require declaring new identifiers for existing items, any items that referenced items using the prior scheme would also become invalid and require updating and new versions, a very cumbersome task that could easily be avoided in this release.

Proposed resolution:
I suggest that we do not further restrict the agency id in this release, use the same regex as 3.2, and add additional documentation to agency id to explain the correct format, and where to obtain the agency id from the DDI registry. We could also mention that a future version of DDI may require valid DDI identifiers from the DDI registry.

This would allow all 3.2 users to migrate to DDI 3.3 when released without a show stopper. It would also allow users a deprecation period for updating their identification to be inline with the DDI suggestions for agency identification.