On Sun, 21 Sep 2003, Petri Helenius wrote:
The whois database is not a replacement for a DNS query.
I´m sure Verisign will come up with a XML Schema for whois information soon.
Sooner then you think! Yesterday, the results of IETF CRISP WG "call for consensus" was announced and the result is in fact IRIS - XML based whois protocol. Introduced by - you guessed it - Verisign! More info on this and draft protocol specs are at http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/crisp-charter.html P.S. Note that I'm not saying anything bad about actual protocol specs creator - Andrew Newton (from Verisign), who did a great job with IRIS drafts. Both he and Eric Hall worked very hard on the draft specifications for competing IRIS (xml based) and FIRS (ldap based) whois protocol specs. I did vote for FIRS myself, but it had nothing to do with who works for which company and its a hard choice since both specifications are good for future whois. -- William Leibzon Elan Networks william@elan.net