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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: whois syntax
A well-defined and widely implemented query language to large volumes of data organized into tables does, in fact, exist. It is called SQL. I guess all that whois silliness is an acute case of NIH syndrome. --vadim On Sat, 20 Oct 2001, Joe Abley wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 01:53:04PM +0200, Iljitsch van Beijnum wrote: > > On Fri, 19 Oct 2001, Joe Abley wrote: > > > > > > There is no standard specified in the RFC for output, just for query > > > > language. > > > > > Is RFC954 a standard in any real sense? Seems to me that the RFC2026 > > > designation for that document would be "Historic", although RFC954 is > > > old enough that it is not labelled with a maturity level. > > > > Well, the process is standardizes is so simple and flexible there > > obviously hasn't been any need to change the past 16 years: > > The original comment was that the *query language* is standardised. > RFC954 digresses beyond the trivial protocol you mentioned to specify > lookup behaviour which is, in practice, entirely implementation-specific. > > > > production *IR/IRR/registry/registrar whois servers is (a) that they > > > all let you look stuff up, and (b) they all listen on 43/tcp. > > > > Isn't trying to standardize the output of whois servers is like trying to > > standardize the output of HTTP servers? Since this output is for human > > consumtion (well, after HTML parsing in the case of HTTP) standardizing > > has very few benefits. > > s/Since/If/ > > Scripts consume the output of whois servers, too. Ask [email protected]$isp > (and witness the energy that went into RIPE-181 and later RPSL to > make the results of queries parsable). > > > Joe >
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