Whois++

The WHOIS++ protocol is adistributed directory system, originally designed to provide a "white pages" search mechanism to find humans, but which could actually be used for arbitrary information retrieval tasks. It was developed in the early 1990s by BUNYIP Information Systems and is documented in theIETF.

WHOIS++ was devised as an extension to the pre-existingWHOIS system.WHOIS was an early networked directory service, originally maintained bySRI International for theDefense Data Network. The WHOIS protocol is still widely used to allow domain ownership records in the Internet to be easily queried.

WHOIS++ attempted to address some of the short comings in the original WHOIS protocol that had become apparent over the years. It supported multiple languages and character sets to help withI18N issues, had a more advanced query syntax, and the ability to generate "forward knowledge" in the form of 'centroid' data structures that could be used to route queries from one server to another. The protocol was designed to bebackward compatible with the older WHOIS standard, so that WHOIS++ clients could still extract meaningful information from the already deployed WHOIS servers.

Whilst WHOIS++ as a white pages directory service never really took off compared to competitors such asX.500, it did gain a notable amount of use in theUnited Kingdom as the underlying search and retrieval protocol of a number of subject based gateways funded as part of theJisc Electronic library programme. This was achieved using software called ROADSthat provided WHOIS++ base and index servers andCGI based web interfaces to WHOIS++ clients. The use of centroids to provide forward knowledge and query routing allowed a subject gateway to not only provide resources to academic users from their own database but also point them at other JISC funded subject gateways that might have useful information.

The WHOIS++ protocol is now designated by the IETF as a historic protocol and is no longer deployed in new systems or developed.

See also [ edit ]

• Prefix WhoIs

References [ edit ]

1. Deutsch, P. et al, RFC1835 Architecture of the WHOIS++ service , IETF, August 1995, Accessed 26th February 2013
2. Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M. and Feinler, E. RFC954 NICNAME/WHOIS , IETF, October 1985, Accessed 26th February 2013
3. ROADS open source (GPL) software distribution containing WHOIS++ server and client implementations

External links [ edit ]

• Collection Level Description - A review of existing practice, section 3.9 describes the use of centroids in WHOIS++ as used in the UK eLib programme.
• JISC eLib Archive - Description of the JISC Electronic Libraries Programme, funded as a result of the Follett Report. This was the output of the Joint Funding Councils' Libraries Review Group chaired by SirBrian Follett and was published in December 1993.