Revised Minutes, November 1, 1993

[Joan Gargano <[e-mail]>]

                                                            WNILS
                         Whois and Network Information Lookup Service
                                         Minutes - November 1, 1993


I.	Approval of the Minutes
	The minutes of July 13, 1993 were unanimously approved without 
	changes.

II.	Status of the Whois++ Architecture
	Peter Deutsch

	Several additions to the protocol are required.

	Inclusion of MIME

	Remove the counters for the number of responses in short 
	responses

	Boolean searching

	There was some discussion on the current use of Whois++ for URN 
	to URL conversions as part of the URI working group activities.  
	Peter Deutsch described the use of domain name service to find a 
	top level Whois++ server for URN information.  It was agreed that 
	this work is helpful to the development of Whois++, but unless this 
	work affects the Whois++ protocol specifications, further 
	discussions will continue within the other working groups.

III.	Status of the Distributed Whois++ model - Centroids
	Chris Weider and Simon Spero

	Chris Weider described changes to the document.

		An X-hierarchy field to provide metainformation for 
		intelligent traversing of the
		index service has been added to provide topology, 
		geographical and administrative values.  Further extensions 
		are needed.

		A mechanism has been added for weighting information for 
		attributes.

		Identifiers for the start and end of attribute information have 
		been added.

		There is now a way to signify any field or any value in a 
		field in a centroid change report.

		A field has been added to designate case sensitivity of string 
		values.

	Simon Spero described the mechanism for searching a centroid tree 
	from the bottom, up.

		Features that are still needed include:

		Need pointers that get from a top level centroid to the 
		bottom levels, bypassing intermediate centroids.

		Replication supported by the ability to pass over the entire 
		contents of  a centroid, rather than a subset.

III.	Status of Whois++ Clients
	Jim Fullton

	Jim mentioned the use of Whois++ in support of networked 
	information retrieval and the type of client development that is 
	occurring as part of other application development.  He 
	recommended that the description of clients focus on the work in 
	these areas rather than white pages interfaces.  Some discussion 
	followed regarding the continuing need for Whois++ as a white 
	pages service.

IV.	Status of Recommended Modifications to the Whois Protocol
	Joan Gargano

	This document is available as an Internet Draft and has not been 
	modified for 6 months.  Final submission as an informational item 
	was delayed pending stabilization of the architecture document.  It 
	does not appear it will require further modification due to protocol 
	development.   Discussion focused on the final status of this paper.

V.	Discussion of Whois++ Implementations

	The following implementation are available:

	Alan Emtage
	[e-mail]		
	ftp:11/01/93/ftp.ucdavis.edu/dist/bunyip-whois++-1.0a.tar.Z

	DUA Interface using LDAP
	Mark Prior
	ftp:11/01/93/ftp.adelaide.edu.au/pub/whois/whois++beta.tar.Z

	PERL and dbm
	Rickard Schoultz
	[e-mail]
	ftp:11/01/93/othello.admin.kth.se/pub/schoultz/kth-whois++-
	1.1a.tar.Z

	PERL 4.036 on SunOS 4.1.xxx
	Martin Hamilton
	[e-mail]
	ftp:11/01/93/genie.lut.ac.uk/lut-whois++-alpha.tar.Z

	There are a few terminal based client available.  Chris Weider 
	offered to compile a list of clients and servers and post them to the 
	[e-mail] mailing list.  There is still a need for 
	graphical user interfaces to Whois++ as a directory service to 
	provide wide scale testing.

V.	Update of Goals and Milestones

	The following goals need revision.
	
	7/31/93
	Submit the Whois and Network Information Lookup Service 
	Recommendations document to the IESG as an Internet 
	Draft.


	7/31/93
	Submit the WHOIS++ protocol document to the IESG as an 
	Internet Draft.

	7/31/93
	Submit the "Architecture of the Whois++ Index Service" document 
	to the IESG as a revised Internet Draft.

	It was decided that all three of the working papers will be 
	completed and submitted as proposed standards.  Protocol work 
	will be frozen for six months to allow for software development.  In 
	the meantime the working group will discuss the future direction of 
	WNILS.  Areas for discussion include:

	Developing a  role for Whois++ as a directory service, 
	potentially including work on data elements

	Continued work on Whois++ as a component of other 
	network information retrieval tools

	Closing the working group after completion of the work on 
	the current protocols.