RFC 1913 (rfc1913) - Page 1 of 16

Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service

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Network Working Group                                          C. Weider
Request for Comments: 1913                                        Bunyip
Category: Standards Track                                     J. Fullton
                                                                   CNIDR
                                                                S. Spero
                                                                     EIT
                                                           February 1996


               Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service

Status of this Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Abstract

   The authors describe an architecture for indexing in distributed
   databases, and apply this to the WHOIS++ protocol.

1. Purpose:

   The WHOIS++ directory service [Deutsch, et al, 1995] is intended to
   provide a simple, extensible directory service predicated on a
   template-based information model and a flexible query language. This
   document describes a general architecture designed for indexing
   distributed databases, and then applys that architecture to link
   together many of these WHOIS++ servers into a distributed, searchable
   wide area directory service.

2. Scope:

   This document details a distributed, easily maintained architecture
   for providing a unified index to a large number of distributed
   WHOIS++ servers. This architecture can be used with systems other
   than WHOIS++ to provide a distributed directory service which is also
   searchable.

3. Motivation and Introduction:

   It seems clear that with the vast amount of directory information
   potentially available on the Internet, it is simply not feasible to
   build a centralized directory to serve all this information. If we
   are to distribute the directory service, the easiest (although not



Weider, et al               Standards Track
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