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draft-ietf-wnils-whois-lookup-00.txt
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WNILS Working Group Joan Gargano
Internet Draft Ken Weiss
July 1, 1993 University of California, Davis
Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
Whois++
Status Of This Memo
This Internet Draft proposes changes to the NICNAME/WHOIS protocol
described in RFC 954. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
This document is an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are working
documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas,
and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute
working documents as Internet Drafts.
Internet Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six
months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet
Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working
draft" or "work in progress." Please check the 1id-abstracts.txt
listing contained in the internet-drafts Shadow Directories on
nic.ddn.mil, nnsc.nsf.net, nic.nordu.net, ftp.nisc.sri.com, or
munnari.oz.au to learn the current status of any Internet Draft.
This Internet Draft expires December 31, 1993.
I. Introduction
As currently defined, NICNAME/WHOIS service is a TCP transaction based
query/response server, running on a few specific central machines, that
provides netwide directory service to Internet users. The Network
Information Center (NIC) maintains the central NICNAME database and
server, defined in RFC 954, providing online look-up of individuals,
network organizations, key host machines, and other information of
interest to users of the Internet. The usefulness of this service has
lead to the development of other distributed directory information
servers and information retrieval tools and it is anticipated more will
be created. Many sites now maintain local directory servers with
information about individuals, departments and services at that specific
site.
Typically these directory servers are network accessible. Local
development of these services has resulted in wide variations in the
type of data stored, access methods, search schemes, and user interfaces.
The purpose of the Whois and Network Information Lookup Service Working
Group (WNILS) is to expand and define the standard for WHOIS types of
services, to resolve issues associated with the variations in access and
provide a consistent and predictable service across the network. This
Internet Draft describes new features for WHOIS to meet these goals.
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WNILS Working Group Whois++ Lookup Service Gargano, Weiss
II. Architecture
The WHOIS service should be provided in a client/server model. There are
no restrictions on the design of the client, provided it is capable of
passing queries to the server in the proper format, and capturing the
server's response in some useful format. Existing WHOIS specifications
call for clients to display responses in human-readable form. This more
general proposal does not impose that restriction.
This paper acknowledges the existence of many distributed information
servers, and anticipates the creation of many more. To help users locate
WHOIS servers, each server should have a nameserver entry in the form
"whois.domain", i.e. whois.internic.net.
III. Client Design and Behavior
The client provides the user interface to the WHOIS system and a
mechanism for query generation and display of the response. The client
is responsible for providing support for paging of long output from the
server. All clients must provide this service. The server will not
include any special characters, or make any efforts to control output to
a screen.
Special search criteria may be specified by the use of keywords or
special characters, some of which are defined in RFC 954. Clients
should be designed to make support for quoted strings unnecessary.
IV. Server Design and Behavior
The server should return the same information in response to a given
query consistently, regardless of the client software or the hardware
used to originate the query. Queries should be evaluated on a
case-insensitive basis. Spaces should not be considered in searches.
A search for "La Russo" should return both "LaRusso" and "La Russo" as
matches.
There are three types of data records supported in this proposal:
records for people, hosts, and domains.
Individual records
Name Name of the individual required
Organization Name of the organization required
Organization-type Type of organization optional
(university, commercial,
research)
Work-telephone Work telephone number optional
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WNILS Working Group Whois++ Lookup Service Gargano, Weiss
Fax-telephone Fax telephone number optional
Work-address Work postal address optional
Title Working title or position optional
within an organization
Department Department optional
Email-address Email address in RFC 822 optional
format for this individual
Handle A unique identifier for this required
record on the local server
Last-update Date this record was last required
updated
Home-telephone Home telephone number optional
Home-address Home postal address optional
Host records
Domain records
Domain-name Domain name registered with the required
Network Information Center (NIC)
Network-address Network address associated with this required
domain name
Admin-name Name of the Administrative Contact for required
this domain
Admin-address Postal address of the Administrative required
Contact for this domain
Admin-telephone Telephone number of the Administrative required
Contact for this domain
Admin-email Electronic mail address in RFC 822 required
format for the Administrative Contact
for this domain
Tech-name Name of the Technical Contact for this required
domain
Tech-address Postal address of the Administrative required
Contact for this domain
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WNILS Working Group Whois++ Lookup Service Gargano, Weiss
Tech-telephone Telephone number of the Technical required
Contact for this domain
Tech-email Electronic mail address in RFC 822 required
format for the Administrative Contact
for this domain
Nameservers Primary domain nameservers for this optional
domain
Last-update Last date this record was updated required
Search Options
A unique handle must be provided for every record in the serve
database to target specific records for display. For example, if
there are three individuals named, respectively, A. La Russo,
B. LaRusso, and C. Larusso, then a search for "LA RUSSO" would return
all three as matches. However, each record would have a unique handle,
i.e. LARUSSO1, LARUSSO2, and LARUSSO3. A search for any one of these
handles would return a single match for that particular individual.
This is consistent with the RFC 954 query, "whois !SMITH1"
Other search options which should be supported are:
whois smith exact match on last name
whois smith,j exact match on last name, first name
whois "smith,j" begins with "J"
whois j. Smith
whois "j. Smith"
whois smith, john exact match on last and first names
whois "smith, john"
whois john Smith
whois "john Smith"
whois .john Smith
whois "smith..." all last names beginning
whois smith* with Smith
whois begins smith
whois smith?? all last names beginning with
"Smith" and containing up to two
letters after "Smith", i.e. "Smith",
"Smithy", "Smithey" and "Smithie"
whois ends smith all last names ending in "smith"
whois exact A Martinez exact match for "A Martinez"
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WNILS Working Group Whois++ Lookup Service Gargano, Weiss
whois fuzzy paulson all last names that sound like or
are spelled like "Paulson"
whois first Kazuko exact match on first name "Kazuko"
whois first begins Art all first names beginning with "Art"
whois first fuzzy Kasuko all first names that sound like or
are spelled like "Kasuko"
whois hamlet.ucdavis.edu IP address and other information
whois system hamlet.ucdavis.edu on the computer called
hamlet.ucdavis.edu.Could be served
by a domain name service querytype
(QTYPE) *
whois system hamlet IP address and other
information on the computer called
hamlet with the default domain
appended. Could be served by a
domain name service querytype
(QTYPE) *
whois 128.120.2.9 domain name and other
whois system 128.120.2.9 information on the computer at
specified IP address. Could be served
by a domain name service querytype
(QTYPE) PTR.
whois !ucdavis-dom site contacts and other
whois domain ucdavis.edu information on the site ucdavis
If any keywords are specified in the query, the server will complete
that specific query and return the results (even if 0 matches are
found). If no keywords are specified, the server will interpret the
query based upon the rules above. Optionally, the server may be
configured so that if a search yields no matches, the query will
automatically be run again, but with the keyword begin inserted.
Servers must support multiple levels of detail in response to queries.
A query yielding multiple matches should return a short-form record
for each match. A query yielding a single match should return a
long-form record. A query yielding no matches should return
context-sensitive help on expanding the search criteria.
On-line Help
The client should return a minimal (two line) help message for every
query sent to the server. That message should identify the database
being searched and provide instructions for the user to obtain more
detailed help screens.
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WNILS Working Group Whois++ Lookup Service Gargano, Weiss
Additional help should be provided in special situations. The server
should recognize queries that return zero matches, and provide a brief
help message explaining how to broaden a search. If a search returns
more than 50 matches, the server should take two actions. First, the
user should get a message explaining how to narrow searches. Second,
the user should be offered the option of re-specifying the search, or
receiving all matching responses. When multiple matches are found and
returned to the client, the server should add a brief help message
explaining how to use handles to narrow the search to a single record.
If the client queries for "help" or "?" then the server should return
a complete help file. The help file should contain information in
sufficient detail for the user to understand and access all the features
of WHOIS service.
V. Extensibility
This Internet Draft defines a limited set of data records and fields
for reliable whois queries. Mechanisms exist, Deutsch, et. al. August
1992, for whois clients to discover extended data records and query for
fields not defined in this draft. It is recommended that Whois clients
and servers include this functionality to maximize the extensibility and
usefulness of this service.
VI. References
Deutsch, et al. Architecture of the WHOIS++ service. August 1992.
Available by anonymous FTP as
ftp.ucdavis.edu://pub/archive/wnils/Architecture.Overview
VII. Authors Addresses
Joan Gargano
Information Technology
Distributed Computing Analysis and Support
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
jcgargano@ucdavis.edu
Ken Weiss
Information Technology
Distributed Computing Analysis and Support
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
krweiss@ucdavis.edu
This Internet Draft expires December 31, 1993.
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