WHOIS-based Extensible Internet Registration Data Service (weirds) ------------------------------------------------------------------ DRAFT Charter v 2011-09-30a Chairs: TBD Internet Area Directors: Pete Resnick & Peter Saint-Andre Description of Working Group: Internet registries for both numbers and names have historically maintained a lookup service to permit public access to some of the registry database. Most registries offer the service via WHOIS (RFC 3912), with additional services being offered via world wide web pages, bulk downloads, and other services like RPSL (RFC 2622). A conspicuous problem with WHOIS is that it has never been internationalized. In the absence of formal specification, ad hoc solutions to signal internationalized registration data have been adopted and deployed. The current collection of WHOIS service specific signalling, widely varying response formats, and error reporting already inhibits automatic processing of WHOIS output. Providing a standards-base solution that scales well could minimize further proliferation of ad hoc solutions. WHOIS also has no data model at all: replies are basically just free-form text. This means that processing of WHOIS output amounts to "screen-scraping", with specialized handlers for every service. Finally, WHOIS does not offer any differential service; it cannot differentiate among clients and offer different information to different classes of user. Various attempts to solve limitations of WHOIS have met with mixed success. The most recent of these was IRIS (RFC 3891). IRIS has not been a successful replacement for WHOIS. The primary reasons for this appear to be the complexity of IRIS, the fact that it has its own control part, and that it requires implementers to understand the details of the transport it is using. In response to these facts, some registries have deployed experimental services that provide the registration information services traditionally offered via WHOIS, using a RESTful approach to data delivery over the web. Three such efforts have been undertaken, and more may be anticipated in response to the increased deployment of IDNA. The Working Group shall undertake to document the existing efforts, to determine the general needs of such a service; and to standardize a single data framework, to be delivered via a RESTful data service using HTTP (optionally using TLS). The overall effort will be broadly aligned with the Cross Registry Internet Service Protocol (CRISP) Requirements (RFC 3707), but with the explicit additional goal of producing a simple, easy-to-implement protocol that is to be deployed via REST. In addition, the following three priorities take precedence over others: 1. Complete support for internationalization of queries and responses, including a standard representation for IDNs and non-ASCII text in queries and responses, and ways to indicate language or character set preferences for responses. The Working Group will need to determine whether language or character set (or both) is an appropriate selector. 2. A rigorous machine-friendly data model that allows for the (current) developments of innovations in TLDs and in number registries. 3. Support for differential service levels, including bulk access, according to different classes of user. It is expected that more than one data profile will need to be developed to be used in different service environments (e.g. number registry versus name registry). The base specification shall include an extension mechanism to permit future developments in the served registries. One possible outcome of the requirements development stage will be that the WG concludes that using one protocol for name and number registries is an error, in which case two different but probably basically similar protocols will be developed. Milestones [TBD] Drafts outlining existing deployments to IESG for publication as Informational RFCs. [TBD] Draft WEIRDS requirements to IESG for publication as Informational RFC. [TBD] Draft WEIRDS base specification to IESG for publication on the standards track. [TBD] Draft WEIRDS object specifications to IESG for publication on the standards track.