Minutes, November 1- DRAFT

[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 request any field or any value in a field

	               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.