Re: [regext] WG LAST CALL: draft-ietf-regext-rdap-partial-response

[Patrick Mevzek <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2020, at 09:43, Antoin Verschuren wrote:
> The following working group document is believed to be ready for 
> submission to the IESG for publication as a standards track document:
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-regext-rdap-partial-response/
> 
> This WG last call will end at close of business, Friday, 13 March 2020.

I am too late, I know.

But anyway I fear that at least the "brief" case will create interoperability
problems, or at least complexity in clients because there is a risk of each
RDAP server thinking of it differently.
The "subsetting_metadata" is only a SHOULD not a MUST, so clients could
remain completely without real explanations on why "brief" for server A
is different from "brief" result for server B.

It would have been nice to provide a template for "brief", at least a SHOULD,
per objects described in the RDAP RFCs.

Specially since the document has this text:
"the
   name, as well as the list of fields for each field set, should be
   shared by most of RDAP providers."

Written like that, this is not a protocol specification, and does not even
give tools at the protocol level to enforce that.

Or, and this could be an easy solution, another draft defining rdapConformance
subsetting_brief_level_0
should define exactly what is brief and then servers are free to properly
signal if they adhere to this definition of fields or not.
There could be multiple drafts in fact for multiple definitions.

PS: the argument in A.1 about the complexity arising out of jCard can "soon"
become obsolete if draft-loffredo-regext-rdap-jcard-deprecation goes through,
so maybe some text should have addressed other non jCard cases (or explaining why
even if jCard is dropped then problems remain)

-- 
  Patrick Mevzek
  [e-mail]