At 11:51 AM +0100 4/16/07, <michael.dillon@bt.com> wrote:

In the 21st century, you look at what is available on the shelf and widely in use on the net and adopt that. Most often this turns out to be a RESTful API that doesn't even need XML, although something like XML-RPC still fits the bill. I still wonder why the widely used LDAP protocol can't be adopted for whois lookups since it is used everywhere in the corporate world. The answer seems to be Not-Invented-Here or "we're netheads and LDAP smells of bellheads", both of which are ridiculous arguments in the today's world.

The CRISP working group considered both an LDAP-based proposal and IRIS during its initial development. If you check the archives, you'll see the extensive discussions of the pros and cons of each approach (http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/crisp/index.html). At the time of that discussion, the RIRs were not interested in using CRISP, so that decision was made based on domain name registry requirements. The RIRs interest in re-using the work of CRISP came after IRIS had already been chosen. The decision might have been different in both were being decided concurrently, but that's not my personal impression. You may also wish to recall that LDAP was standardized in the IETF and had active working groups in the Apps Area as recently as last year (LDAPBIS; LDAPEXT closed earlier, as did LDUP). I don't think it was rejection of external forces that drove the decision. Full disclosure: I was chair of CRISP at the time of the decision discussed above and later AD for both CRISP and the LDAP working groups. That probably makes me a biased observer. Your mileage may vary, and past performance is no guarantee of future results. Ted