One document matched: draft-mealling-rwhoisurl-01.txt

Differences from draft-mealling-rwhoisurl-00.txt

               The RWhois Version 1.x Uniform Resource Locator
                  <draft-mealling-rwhoisurl-01.txt>

Status of this Memo

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1. Abstract

RWhois is an Internet directory access protocol, defined in RFC1714 [1] and
RFC2167 [3]. This document describes a format for an RWhois Uniform Resource
Locator (URL) that will allow Internet clients to have direct access to the
RWhois protocol. An RWhois URL will represent a single query to an RWhois
server.

2. URL Definition

An RWhois URL begins with the protocol prefix "rwhois" and is defined by the
following ABNF grammar.

     RWHOISURL = "rwhois://" [ SERVER ] "/"  [ QUERY ]

     SERVER    = 1 *DNSCHAR *["." 1*DNSCHAR] [ ":" 1..65535 ]

     QUERY     = [ CLASS ] "?" TERMS

     CLASS     = 1*ALPHA

     TERMS     = a list of query terms as defined in RFC 1714 and/or RFC2167

     DNSCHAR   = ALPHA/DIGIT/DASH

     ALPHA     = "a".."z"/"A".."Z"

     DIGIT     = 0..9

     DASH      = "-"

The RWhois prefix indicates an entry or entries residing in the RWhois
server running on the given hostname at the given port number as encoded in
SERVER. The default port is TCP port 4321. Any URL-illegal characters (e.g.,
spaces) MUST be escaped using the % method described in RFC 1738.

The CLASS specifies the RWhois class to which the object(s) in question
belong. If the CLASS part of the URL is omitted, all data contained in the
server will be searched. Please note that this may cause ambiguities that
may not be intended. Those developers encoding RWhois URLs should encode the
class if it is available. Note that if the entry resides in the RWhois
namespace, it should be reachable from any RWhois server in that tree. If
the SERVER part of the URL is missing, it is assumed to be a local query.

If the QUERY is missing then the URL does not identify a particular object,
authority-area or class. Instead it simply identifies the server. In the
event a client receives such a URL it should connect to the server and
initiate its default behavior for connecting to a new and possibly unknown
server. Suggested behaviors include checking for that servers available
classes and/or authority-areas.

3. RWhois Version 1.0 vs. 1.5 Interoperability

This URL is meant to work with both the 1.0 and 1.5 versions of the RWhois
protocol. There are two issues that developers should be aware of when using
this URL.

   * Output Display and Restriction Keywords

     In RWhois Version 1.0, an additional pre-query term could be specified
     that determined which values were returned to the client. These were
     derived from the original whois [RFC954] specification and included
     items like dump (#), SUMMARY ($), and FULL (=). Since a URL is used to
     point to the instance of the object and not its representation, the
     developer should determine what display type and restriction to use for
     his/her particular application. Thus, even though this term is
     considered part of the query in 1.0, it MUST NOT to be used in the URL
     itself.

   * Authority Areas

     Version 1.5 has a much stronger concept of authority areas. This should
     be kept in mind when encoding a particular URL so that no ambiguity is
     encountered for similar objects in different authority areas. Thus, as
     with CLASS, the authority area should be encoded whenever it is
     available.

4. Examples

The following are some example RWhois URLs using the format defined above.

   * An RWhois URL referring to the domain class objects that contain the
     string "network solutions", available from the local RWhois server.

     rwhois:///domain?network%20solutions

   * An RWhois URL referring to the domain class containing the string
     "network solutions" on a particular RWhois server. This URL corresponds
     to a base object search of the domain class.

     rwhois://netman1.netsol.com/domain?network%20solutions

   * An RWhois URL referring to the set of entries found by querying the
     local RWhois server and looking for a person with the name of "Scott
     Williamson". Note the % encoded quotes and space.

     rwhois:///person?name=%42scott%20williamson%42

5. Security Considerations

The RWhois URL format does not provide a way to specify security information
to use when resolving the URL. It is expected that such requests will either
be unauthenticated or the client will be able to negotiate the security
requirements. The security implications of resolving an RWhois URL are the
same as those of resolving any RWhois query. See the RFC 1714 and RFC 2167
for more details.

6. Prototype Implementation Availability

There is a prototype implementation of the specification defined in this
document available. It is the RWhois client, provided in both source and
binary forms. See for more details.

7. Bibliography

[1] Williamson, S., and Kosters, M., "RWhois Protocol", RFC 1714,
March, 1995.

[2] Berners-Lee, T., Masinter, L., and McCahill, M., "Uniform Resource
Locators (URL)", RFC 1738, December, 1994.

[3] Williamson, S., M. Kosters, D. Blacka, J. Singh, K. Zeilstra,
"Referral Whois (RWhois) Protocol V1.5", RFC 2167, June, 1997.

8. Authors' Addresses

 Scott Williamson            Michael Mealling
 505 Huntmar Park Dr.        505 Huntmar Park Dr.
 Herndon, VA 22070           Herndon, VA 22070
 Phone: (703) 742-4820       Phone: (770) 491-1379
 email: scottw@rwhois.net    email: michaelm@rwhois.net