RFC 1835 (rfc1835) - Page 3 of 41
Architecture of the WHOIS++ service
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1835 Architecture of the WHOIS++ service August 1995
Appendix A - Some Sample Queries .......................... 31
Appendix B - Some sample responses ........................ 31
Appendix C - Sample responses to system commands .......... 33
Appendix D - Sample whois++ session ....................... 35
Appendix E - System messages .............................. 36
Appendix F - The WHOIS++ BNF Grammar ...................... 38
Appendix G - Description of Regular expressions ........... 40
1. Part I - WHOIS++ Overview
1.1. Purpose and Motivation
The current NIC WHOIS service [HARR85] is used to provide a very
limited directory service, serving information about a small number
of Internet users registered with the DDN NIC. Over time the basic
service has been expanded to serve additional information and similar
services have also been set up on other hosts. Unfortunately, these
additions and extensions have been done in an ad hoc and
uncoordinated manner.
The basic WHOIS information model represents each individual record
as a Rolodex-like collection of text. Each record has a unique
identifier (or handle), but otherwise is assumed to have little
structure. The current service allows users to issue searches for
individual strings within individual records, as well as searches for
individual record handles using a very simple query-response
protocol.
Despite its utility, the current NIC WHOIS service cannot function as
a general White Pages service for the entire Internet. Given the
inability of a single server to offer guaranteed response or
reliability, the huge volume of traffic that a full scale directory
service will generate and the potentially huge number of users of
such a service, such a trivial architecture is obviously unsuitable
for the current Internet's needs for information services.
This document describes the architecture and protocol for WHOIS++, a
simple, distributed and extensible information lookup service based
upon a small set of extensions to the original WHOIS information
model. These extensions allow the new service to address the
community's needs for a simple directory service, yet the extensible
architecture is expected to also allow it to find application in a
number of other information service areas.
Added features include an extension to the trivial WHOIS data model
and query protocol and a companion extensible, distributed indexing
service. A number of other options have also been added, like boolean
operators, more powerful search constraints and search methods, and
Deutsch, et al Standards Track