Re: [regext] Second WG LAST CALL: draft-ietf-regext-rdap-reverse-search

[Patrick Mevzek <[e-mail]>]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, at 08:54, Antoin Verschuren wrote:
> Please review this document and indicate your support (a simple “+1” is 
> sufficient) or concerns with the publication of this document by 
> replying to this message on the list.

I should probably have said something earlier, sorry about this.
But I have a concern about §6 Implementation Considerations
as I think it glances over far too quickly on very important points.

I think it can be easy to expect reverse queries to generate "lots" of results,
but then all examples given ("restricting the
   search functionality, limiting the rate of search requests according
   to the user's authorization, truncating and paging the results, and
   returning partial responses.") are not given details, which means there will be left
to implementors and hence multiple incompatible solutions will emerge which will make writing
a client more complex, for any case where it has to span multiple RDAP servers
(and then you are exactly in same territory as EPP extensions, too many of them and too incompatible between them to easily write one client working with all servers).

There is RFC 8977 "Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Query Parameters for Result
                           Sorting and Paging" but it is not even referenced from this draft.
Same for RFC 8982 "Registration Data Access Protocol (RDAP) Partial Response", shouldn't
be cited at least as a non-normative reference?

- "restricting the search functionality" does that mean by things related to the protocol like constraints on `{searchable-resource-type}` or on `{related-resource-type}` or on `<search-condition>` or by things external to it, like rate-limit? How will a client discover that it got limited for any of those reasons?
- "truncating and paging the results": maybe mention RFC 8977 and 8982
- "returning partial responses.": RFC 8982?

But how RFC 8982 would apply here since it is not necessarily the client asking for limited
data in return but the server deciding to prune them in content or length?

Same question in fact for RFC 8977, that starts with client requesting specific subsets and order.

I also dislike the mention of indexes here because this is specific terminology
of specific technologies and as such I don't believe an RFC describing a protocol
should lay any assumption or give constraints on how implementers decide to implement it.

-- 
  Patrick Mevzek
  [e-mail]