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'11') Summary: 16 errors (**), 0 flaws (~~), 1 warning (==), 4 comments (--). Run idnits with the --verbose option for more detailed information about the items above. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 ASID Working Group Martin Hamilton 3 INTERNET-DRAFT Loughborough University 4 May 1997 6 WHOIS++ URL Specification 7 Filename: draft-ietf-asid-whois-url-01.txt 9 Status of This Memo 11 This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working 12 documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its 13 areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also 14 distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. 16 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six 17 months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other 18 documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts 19 as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in 20 progress.'' 22 To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check 23 the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet-Drafts 24 Shadow Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), 25 nic.nordu.net (Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or 26 munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim). 28 Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Editorial comments should 29 be sent directly to the author. Technical discussion will take 30 place on the IETF ASID mailing list - ietf-asid@umich.edu. 32 This Internet Draft expires November 19th, 1997. 34 Abstract 36 This document defines a new Uniform Resource Locator (URL) scheme 37 "whois++", which provides a convention within the URL framework for 38 referring to WHOIS++ servers and the data held within them. 40 1. Overview of the WHOIS++ protocol 42 RFC 1835 [1] defines a simple Internet directory protocol known as 43 WHOIS++. In order that WHOIS++ may be used within the Uniform 44 Resource Locator (URL) framework defined by RFC 1738 [2], a URL 45 scheme definition for WHOIS++ is necessary. This document specifies 46 a URL scheme "whois++", for use with the WHOIS++ protocol. 48 WHOIS++ is text based protocol after the fashion of many popular 49 Internet application protocols, such as SMTP [3] and FTP [4]. 50 Although the protocol is TCP based, WHOIS++ is effectively stateless 51 - no state information is preserved across requests, there is no 52 concept of a session per se since each request/response pair is 53 self-contained, and there is no "login" phase. 55 WHOIS++ transactions normally consist of a single request from the 56 client and response from the server, followed by the TCP connection 57 between the two being torn down. Use of the "hold" constraint in the 58 WHOIS++ request makes it possible for the client to indicate that it 59 would like to keep the TCP connection open for more than one request/ 60 response pair, but whether this is actually done is at the discretion 61 of the server. 63 2. WHOIS++ URL specification 65 The following information is necessary for a WHOIS++ client to 66 formulate and deliver a request: 68 o the domain name or IP address of the server to contact 69 o the port number of the server (63 by default) 70 o the request itself - normally a single line of text 72 This is a good match with the generic URL scheme specified in RFC 73 1738, and so a URL following the generic syntax is appropriate. 75 The WHOIS++ URL scheme is defined as: 77 whoisppurl = "whois++://" hostport [ "/" whoisppsrch ] 79 where 81 whoisppsrch = *uchar 83 The definitions for "hostport" and "uchar" are imported from the BNF 84 style grammar for URLs defined in Section 5 of RFC 1738. BNF for the 85 WHOIS++ request format ("whoisppsrch") is defined in Appendix F of 86 RFC 1835. 88 3. Examples 90 The whois++ URL scheme defined above makes it possible to write URLs 91 for any of the following: 93 (a) a reference particular WHOIS++ server, without implying 94 that a search should be done 95 (b) a "canned" search of a particular server 96 (c) individual objects within a server 98 Case (a) simply requires that the host and optionally the port number 99 be specified, e.g. 101 whois++://acm.org/ 103 or 105 whois++://acm.org:63/ 107 When given a WHOIS++ URL of this format, implementations may choose 108 to present the user with a search form or dialogue, contact the 109 server for information about which WHOIS++ options it supports, and 110 so on. The WHOIS++ default port 63 should be used if the port number 111 is not specified. 113 Case (b) requires a search specification to be present, e.g. 115 whois++://acm.org/name=phil%20and%20name=zimmerman 117 This may be sent verbatim to the server, once hex escaped chars in 118 the URL have been converted back to normal, e.g. 120 name=phil and name=zimmerman 122 Case, (c) is effectively an instance of (b). This may be implemented 123 as a search where the request consists of the WHOIS++ "handle" of the 124 requested object, e.g. 126 whois++://acm.org/handle=number6 128 Although there are no global constraints specified in these last two 129 URLs, the WHOIS++ client may choose to add global constraints of its 130 own, e.g. use of the "hold" constraint to request that the 131 connection be held open for a further request. 133 If in addition, global constraints are part of the URL, this can 134 easily be recognised by the presence of a colon ":" immediately after 135 the slash "/" which separates the host and port information from the 136 search specifier, e.g. 138 whois++://acm.org/:authenticate=password;name=foo;password=bar 140 At the implementor's discretion, the client may choose to pass these 141 global constraints on in any queries which are passed to this server, 142 e.g. if this URL was used in a search for "zimmerman", the request 143 passed to the server might be either of 144 zimmerman 146 or 148 zimmerman:authenticate=password;name=foo;password=bar 150 or "zimmerman", followed by some combination of the global 151 constraints specified in the URL and other global constraints 152 introduced by the WHOIS++ client. 154 4. Issues 156 4.1 Relationship with WHOIS and RWhois 158 The three protocols in the WHOIS family, NICNAME/WHOIS [5], WHOIS++, 159 and RWhois [6], are not particularly similar. WHOIS++ and RWhois use 160 different request and response formats, and have different well-known 161 port numbers. WHOIS responses are assumed to be plain text and human 162 readable. Consequently, this document has not attempted to define a 163 single URL scheme for use with all three protocols. 165 4.2 Localisation 167 WHOIS++ requests may contain "difficult characters" such as space, 168 and characters drawn from non-ASCII character sets such as the UTF-8 169 variant of Unicode [7,8]. Hence, the usual rules about hex-escaping 170 illegal and reserved characters should apply - and the definiton of 171 the WHOIS++ request as "uchar". Note that the default WHOIS++ port 172 of 63 should be used if the port number component of the "hostport" 173 construction is left out. 175 4.3 Use of global constraints 177 Since global constraints such as authentication information, language 178 and character set preferences may be expressed as part of the WHOIS++ 179 request, it is not thought necessary to specify them separately in a 180 mechanism such as the "user@host" construction defined for the FTP 181 URL. 183 4.4 Encoding multi-line WHOIS++ requests 185 Most WHOIS++ requests can be expected to consist of a single line of 186 text, followed by carriage return and line feed characters. It 187 should, however, be noted that it may be necessary to encode multi- 188 line requests within WHOIS++ URLs. Software which implements WHOIS++ 189 URLs should either be capable of handling this, or fail gracefully. 191 4.5 Integration with HTML/HTTP 192 WHOIS++ URLs may be used as hyperlinks in HTML [9] documents, though 193 it should be noted that the relative URL syntax defined in RFC 1808 194 [10] is not appropriate for use in these links. This is because 195 WHOIS++ requests do not map conveniently onto the generic resource 196 locator syntax used for relative URLs - the syntactic conventions 197 used in writing a WHOIS++ request are very different from those of 198 the generic resource locator. 200 The WHOIS++ protocol and the WHOIS++ URL lend themselves to 201 implementation via a proxy HTTP [11] gateway, since the information 202 necessary to contact the server and deliver the request is embedded 203 within the URL itself. A simple proof-of-concept proxy gateway has 204 been implemented which takes an HTTP "GET" request containing a 205 WHOIS++ URL, carries out a WHOIS++ transaction and returns the 206 results formatted as HTML. This may be found at: 208 210 It is not appropriate to use any HTTP methods other than "GET" with 211 WHOIS++ URLs. 213 The appearance of the "+" character in the protocol scheme component 214 of a URL is legal, according to RFC 1738. The author has lingering 215 doubts about the ability of all software which processes URLs, for 216 example in parsing HTML documents, to cope with this character. No 217 evidence has been found to back these doubts up, however. 219 5. Security Considerations 221 Client software should check both the contents of the WHOIS++ URL and 222 the results returned from WHOIS++ search requests for any unsafe 223 characters and character strings. 225 It is possible to embed requests for other protocols within this URL 226 format. This is an approach which may be used to defeat security 227 schemes, spoof protocols, and so on. Implementors should consider 228 requiring user confirmation when requests are directed to reserved 229 ports (i.e. those less than 1024) other than 63 and 43, or well- 230 known ports in the unreserved range. 232 Implementations should take care not to cache authentication 233 information. In some cases, as with the simple "password" 234 authentication shceme defined in RFC 1835, authentication information 235 may take the form of clear text user names and passwords. This is a 236 WHOIS++ protocol issue and beyond the scope of this URL 237 specification. 239 6. Acknowledgements 241 Thanks to Jeff Allen, Lorcan Dempsey, Patrik Faltstrom, Jon Knight, 242 William F. Maton, Larry Masinter, and Scott Williamson for their 243 comments on draft versions of this document. 245 This work was supported by grant 12/39/01 from the UK Electronic 246 Libraries Programme (eLib) and grant RE 1004 from the European 247 Commission's Telematics for Research Programme. 249 7. References 251 Request For Comments (RFC) and Internet Draft documents are available 252 from and numerous mirror sites. 254 [1] P. Deutsch, R. Schoultz, P. Faltstrom and C. 255 Weider. "Architecture of the WHOIS++ service", RFC 256 1835. August 1995. 258 [2] T. Berners-Lee, L. Masinter and M. McCahill (eds). 259 "Uniform Resource Locators (URL)", RFC 1738. 260 December 1994. 262 [3] J. Postel. "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 263 821. August 1982. 265 [4] J. Postel, J. K. Reynolds. "File Transfer Proto- 266 col", RFC 959. October 1985. 268 [5] The Unicode Standard, Worldwide Character Encoding, 269 Version 1.0, Volume 1, Addison-Wesley, 1990. ISBN 270 0-201-56788-1. 272 [6] The Unicode Standard, Worldwide Character Encoding, 273 Version 1.0, Volume 2, Addison-Wesley, 1992. ISBN 274 0-201-60845-6. 276 [7] K. Harrenstien, M.K. Stahl, E.J. Feinler. 277 "NICNAME/WHOIS", RFC 954. October 1985. 279 [8] S. Williamson & M. Kosters. "Referral Whois 280 Protocol (RWhois)", RFC 1714. November 1994. 282 [9] T. Berners-Lee, D. Connolly. "Hypertext Markup 283 Language - 2.0", RFC 1866. November 1995. 285 [10] R. Fielding. "Relative Uniform Resource Locators", 286 RFC 1808. June 1995. 288 [11] T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, H. Frystyk. "Hyper- 289 text Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945. May 290 1996. 292 8. Author's address 294 Martin Hamilton 295 Department of Computer Studies 296 Loughborough University of Technology 297 Leics. LE11 3TU, UK 299 Email: m.t.hamilton@lut.ac.uk 301 This Internet Draft expires November 19th, 1997.