Network Working Group J. Klensin
Internet-Draft February 15, 2004
Expires: August 15, 2004
A Search-based access model for the DNS
draft-klensin-dns-search-06.txt
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2004). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo discusses strategies for supporting "DNS searching" --
finding of names in the DNS, or references that will ultimately point
to DNS names, by a mechanism layered above the DNS itself that
permits fuzzy matching, selection that uses attributes or facets, and
use of descriptive terms. Demand for these facilities appear to be
increasing with growth in the Internet (and especially the web) and
with requirements to move beyond the restricted subset of ASCII names
that have been the traditional contents of DNS "Class=IN". This
document proposes a layered system for access to DNS names in which
the layers above the DNS involve search, rather than lookup (exactly
known target), functions. It also discusses some of the issues and
challenges in completing the design of, and deploying, such a system.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction and Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. A multiple search-strategy environment . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.1 Base Layer Identifiers -- a lookup system and the DNS. . . . 7
2.2 A Globally-accessible Search Component for Names . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 The facets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.2 The name string . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.3 Case matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.4 More complex character matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.5 Query formation and specification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2.6 Imprecise matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.7 Registration rules and query rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2.8 Server location . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 The Third Component: Locality and/or
content-domain-specific data and mechanisms . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 The Non-directory Search Component: free-text searching
applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Database and searching differentiation . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3. Context and Model Details: Global faceted search . . . . . . 19
3.1 The data search and access model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2 Uniqueness of name structures in global faceted search . . . 20
3.2.1 The case for unique names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.2.2 Non-unique names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2.3 A middle ground approach: artificial uniqueness . . . . . . 21
3.3 Sources for controlled-vocabulary facets ("attributes") . . 22
3.3.1 Discussion of language identification . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3.2 Discussion of geographical identification . . . . . . . . . 23
3.3.3 Discussion of Industry Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.4 Deployment against the existing DNS base . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.5 Thoughts about user interfaces (UIs) . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.6 Implementation models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.6.1 Calling and returning values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.6.2 The cache model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.6.3 An example: Looking at Chinese Traditional-Simplified
Mappings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.6.4 An example: Distance functions and Latin-based alphabets . . 29
3.7 Older applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4. Context and model details: Localized and Topical
Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5. Comparisons to existing and proposed technology . . . . . . 30
5.1 The IDN Strawman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
5.2 "Keyword" systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.3 Client-side and server-side solutions . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6. Comments on business models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
6.1 Faceted global searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.1.1 Facet listings and identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.1.2 Registration and searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
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6.2 Localized and topical databases and searching . . . . . . . 34
7. Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8. Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9. IANA Considerations and related topics . . . . . . . . . . . 35
10. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
11. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
12. Changes between versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
12.1 Major changes between version 05 and 06 . . . . . . . . . . 36
12.2 Major changes between version 04 and 05 . . . . . . . . . . 37
13. Placeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . 42
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1. Introduction and Executive Summary
The notion of "DNS searching" is somewhat of an oxymoron: the DNS is
structured to only perform exact lookups of structured strings of
labels. But, as discussed elsewhere, there is considerable demand
for searching facilities -- partial and fuzzy matching, selection
that uses attributes or facets, and searching using descriptive
terms-- and that demand appears to be increasing with growth in the
Internet (and especially the web) and with requirements to move
beyond the restricted subset of ASCII names that have been the
traditional contents of DNS Class=IN. This document proposes a
three-component system for access to DNS names. In this approach,
the DNS (more or less as historically implemented) comprises the
base, with the other two components (or strategies) layered on top of
it, but not necessarily on each other. These new approaches involve
search, rather than the DNS's very restricted lookup (known-item
search), functions. It also discusses some of the issues and
challenges in completing the design of, and deploying, such a system.
These types of services are unnecessary as long as the problem is
defined as "get non-ASCII identifiers into the DNS, but keep to a
well-specified set of characters and usage so they retain strict
identifier properties" --more or less the approach taken in IDNA
[RFC3490]. Such approaches do not, as discussed in [RFC3467], solve
the problem as perceived by many people. One non- technical way of
looking at this is that the DNS is fundamentally downward-facing: it
is designed to support references to network and host resources.
Users want something upward-facing, i.e., that provides
natural-language terminology and searching for resources of interest.
And, as the IAB has pointed out [RFC2825], even if "fixing the DNS"
did the job, that would be the easy part: the harder problem is
considering and adjusting the applications and applications-level
user interfaces.
It has been suggested that introducing a "directory" or "keywords"
into, or above, the DNS could be used as a solution to the IDN
problem and, often, several others. Probing statements about
"directories" often quickly demonstrates that their advocates don't
agree on what they mean. Similarly, many of those who advocate
"keyword systems" use that term to describe something very different
from the traditional use of keywords in information retrieval
systems. This section outlines a three-strategy search/lookup model
(adding two location strategies to the one provided by the DNS, i.e.,
constructing a two or three-layer model, rather than continuing with
the single one we have today). These new strategies consist of two
layers: the current DNS and a collection of alternate methods for
searching for a network resource, identified by URIs, and using
different additional information and searching methods. The key one
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of these is a global faceted search-capable component using an
extremely simple set of facets. The other proposal is for more
context-specific or localized, but broader, search approaches. The
overall document is intended as a strawman for criticism and
development, rather than as a specific proposal. I.e., the details,
especially for localized systems, are left for IETF WG or other
efforts.
The document also introduces the concept of an expanded and powerful
information cache, under user control, which should supercede the
functions of now-traditional "address books for data", "bookmarks",
lists of "favorites", and similar methods of retaining an association
between a user-memorable name and a network resource. The additional
power comes from retaining and utilizing, not only the name to
resource binding, but also information needed to reconstruct a search
and to determine when to do so.
As a terminology issue, the "layers" and components described here
are probably best thought of as elements of the applications layer,
with actual user-facing applications lying yet above them. The term
"search layer" has been used below to refer to both the faceted and
localized components where it appears to be needed for clarity or
emphasis. "Sublayer" and "level" are sometimes used interchangeably
with terms for those components: suggestions for better terminology
would be welcomed.
For the two "above DNS" DNS, international ("universal") character
sets and scripts are assumed and part of this initial design. Since
actual or applications-applied DNS restrictions are not being
inherited upward into these components, coding can be chosen for
maximum utility and balance among language groups. E.g., native UCS-
4 could be used as an alternative to a secondary encoding form such
as UTF-8 or an ASCII-compatible ("ACE") recoding such as that
contemplated by [RFC3490]. And, of course, coding systems for
[ISO10646] characters are required only in on-the-wire transactions
and operations closely connected to them; we would anticipate that
localized search operations in areas that use other coded character
sets might be carried out largely in those locally-chosen coding
systems.
This document is intended to evolve into a framework and model for
the layered search system, rather than a complete specification or
even an approximation to one. It is complemented (for the global
search system) by [Mealling-SLS], which discusses a CRNP-based
[RFC2972] implementation model for that approach, by the more
keyword-focused model of [Arrouye], by the caching data provided by
Shi and Liu [SHI-CACHING] and, we hope, by other systems more
tailored to specific languages or cultures. Additional documents are
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expected to be developed that describe other aspects of all elements
of this general proposal.
2. A multiple search-strategy environment
The material below suggests three or more components or alternatives
for name lookup and search:
1. The DNS, with the existing lookup mechanisms and a single global
name space in which names are unique.
Names are placed in the DNS by those who wish to use those names
themselves (e.g., for identifying hosts and resources within a
home, an enterprise, or cooperating groups of organizations).
The DNS was never designed for searching for, or querying of, an
identifier by someone who does not already know what it is.
A useful analogy has been drawn between DNS names and variable
names in a programming language [Austein2001]. Expanding on it,
locally-memorable, and hence internationalized, identifiers are
important for network engineers and operators to use in referring
to resources regardless of whether they are actually valuable for
end users. Such engineers and operators are used to developing
identifiers using highly-restricted character (and other) rules
and to remembering the identifiers they create (or having other
tools to deal with them).
2. A restricted, facet-based, global search system.
This system still preserves a global name space, but name strings
are not expected to be unique and the set of facet values for a
given entity may not be (see Section 3.2).
Names are placed into this type of system by those who want to be
found, or want the names or resources to be found, by others.
The assumptions are neither that those others will know exactly
what name they are trying to access (where the DNS requires
precise knowledge of names or very good guessing) or that names
will be unique (where the DNS requires uniqueness). But the
search activity is still based on names (and attributes), not
topics.
It may be useful to think of this layer as similar to "white
pages" services. This comparison is discussed in more detail
below.
3. Commercial, localized, and potentially topic-specific, search
environments.
These environments utilize multiple, localized, name spaces.
These would typically be localized by language or (physical or
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political) geography, but might be structured around, e.g.,
specific subject matter.
Names are placed into these systems by those who wish them to be
found within the specific topic area context (or language or
locality or combination of them). Because the environments are
localized, different search terms and levels of granularity can
be used in different search sites and name spaces.
It may be useful to think of this layer as similar to "yellow
pages" services. Again, the comparison is discussed in more
detail below.
4. Something else?
As discussed below, it is possible to think about the collection
of automated content-based search systems that are available on
the Internet -- e.g., the traditional "search engines" such as
-- as components of the "search layer". The approaches described
in more detail in this document utilize a "directory" approach,
i.e., the information in them is put there precisely because some
individual or enterprise would like to be found, and found using
that information. The search engines, by contrast, rely on
analysis of the content of online materials to index those
materials.
The following may help illustrate the relationships being
proposed here.
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| applications |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| | access cache | |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . |-------------------| . . . . . . |
| (directory-based approaches) | (free-text approaches) |
| Global faceted | Topical, usually | web search |
| name search | local search | |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| Domain Name System |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| Network resources (by IP Address, Port, etc.) |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
2.1 Base Layer Identifiers -- a lookup system and the DNS.
In this model, the DNS remains largely as is (see Section 3.4 and
following) or, perhaps, a bit closer to its original purpose and
assumptions than the direction in which it has evolved in recent
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years. I.e., it is a distributed database, with precise lookups,
whose lookup keys are identifiers for Internet hosts and other
objects. We give up the notion that these identifiers should also
serve as human-useful names or at least try to abandon that notion.
As an aside, note that some people have suggested that we should
dehumanize DNS names entirely, e.g., prohibit the registration and
use of any name that can be found in any dictionary for any language
that can be represented in the DNS-acceptable character set. This
proposal doesn't include that idea. But it is absent primarily
because it does not appear that the transition process would be worth
the time it would take to explore, rather than because it has no
appeal.
The goal for this base component is relatively simple, unique,
identifiers. It is probably desirable that these identifiers be able
to have some human mnemonic value, but less important that they be
tightly bound to real-world names and descriptions.
The inputs and outputs at this layer remain as they are in the DNS
today. This proposal is complementary to those of [RFC3490] which
accommodates non-hostname format names more or less directly in the
DNS itself for circumstances in which they are deemed important for
mnemomic or other purposes. "Hostname-format names" are those that
are restricted to the ASCII-based "letter-digit- hyphen" (LDH) format
traditionally used in Internet applications [HOSTNAME] and identified
as prudent practice in section 2.3.1 of the DNS specification
[RFC1035]).
2.2 A Globally-accessible Search Component for Names
A faceted search system with a small number of facets, built on top
of the DNS.
Much of the current burden borne by the DNS would appear to be better
focused on a search system that contains names and a small number of
attributes represented in name facets. That DNS burden includes a
wide range of non-identifier goals and constraints: names that a user
can understand and find and that have significant mnemonic value,
names with trademark implications, a wide variety of naming systems
and, in general, helping people find the things for which they are
looking. It is critical that the number of attributes be constrained
to a minimal set, and that other attributes, especially those of
special interest, be deferred to the third type of system, described
below.
The term "attribute" is used here and below to identify the
controlled vocabulary or rule-defined facets as distinct from the
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free-form "name-string".
It is probably most useful to think about this layer in terms of a
structured, multifacted, multihierarchical, thesaurus-like database
with search capability (Cf. ISO IS 5127-1 and IS 5127-6 [ISO5127]),
rather than as a "directory" in the sense of X.500 and its
derivatives and antagonists.
2.2.1 The facets
A key question is what facets to use once the major commercial
product requirements are removed (to the third search component, see
below). It appears to me that, to satisfy to the critical
name-uniqueness and real world pressures on the DNS, candidates for
identifying facets might be
name-string. Characters from IS 10646, see below.
language. Presumably codes as specified in RFC 3066 (see Section
3.3.1)
geographical location. Country, and/or for some federal countries,
country/ province ("state"). Granularity is important and there
may be a case for an additional facet based in a coordinate system
or for a two-level facet. See Section 3.3.2.
network location. If we can figure out what that means and how to
express it in a canonical way.
industry category code. For companies, presumably derived from some
existing official list such as the WIPO Nice Agreement list
[WIPO-NICE]. The list would presumably require extension in some
way to deal with non-commercial organizations and entities and to
identify resources and services associated with people. See
Section 3.3.3.
This typology gives the trademark view of the world somewhat more
precedence in looking at name conflict issues than one might like in
principle. But, in practice, one of the key issues we have
encountered in trying to store "names", rather than identifiers, in
the DNS is that the process unreasonably flattens the space, not only
from a technical standpoint but from a usability one. That "Joe's
Auto Repair" and "Joe's Pizza" can co-exist in the same geographical
area without conflict or confusion and that "Joe's Pizza" in one area
can co-exist with "Joe's Pizza" in another, again without conflict or
confusion, are the consequence of the way we name and identify things
in the real world. Most trademark rules are the consequence of those
naming systems, not their cause and many perceived conflicts between
the trademark system and DNS usage are the result of this flattening.
It is not intended that this level act as a white pages service for
people. Doing so leads down several slippery slopes at once,
including heightened privacy concerns and the associated requirement
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to identify, authenticate, or authorize those submitting queries.
The general intent is that the list of facets be fixed by protocol
and that possible values for each facet be controlled vocabularies,
not necessarily (and probably not) controlled from the same source
(see Section 3.2). We would hope to utilize existing terminology
lists where possible. For a particular record (i.e., a name and its
set of attributes), and especially if requirements for uniqueness can
be bypassed or relaxed, the selection (from the controlled
vocabularies) of particular facet values would be the responsibility
of the entity registering the names. In other words, someone
registering a "name" in this system would select values for each of
the facets from the controlled vocabulary for that facet as part of
the process of placing the name into a database.
It is important to note that the registration of that name would
include all of the associated facets, although the vocabularies for
all of the facets other than the "name-string" would be drawn from
specific, external lists (controlled vocabularies or rules). It
would not be desirable, and probably would not be feasible, for
registrants to record their names in independent, facet-based,
databases with one facet per database.
There is also no magic in the proposed system. Names are placed in
the system with particular facet sets because a registrant wants them
there. A registrant who wishes to have a given name-string
associated with different facet values (e.g., to identify different
locations or lines of business) will make multiple registrations.
While all faceted name strings would contain the same facets, there
is no technical reason why one or more of these might not have a
blank (or "missing") value, presumably causing a match to any search
term for that facet. More important, searching for a name might omit
one or more facets from the search, again matching any value that
actually appeared in the database.
It should be clear that there is significantly more information (from
the values of the facets) at this layer than there is in the DNS.
2.2.2 The name string
The names in this environment can reasonably be written in IS 10646
codes or some recoding of them. Since we would be starting more or
less from scratch, we could select lengths and codings for maximum
efficiency and utility, not to meet the constraints of existing
software. In such a context, this author has a slight bias for
direct UCS-4 coding. This is in preference to ASCII-compatible
("ACE") codes; compressed, null-octet-eliminating, systems such as
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UTF-8; or surrogate introducers to hold things to 16 bits. The loss
in transport efficiency is likely to be more than compensated for by
gains in cleanliness and equal treatment of all scripts. And, if
compression is needed, it is perhaps better to do it at the string
level rather than the character one. The optimal coding may never be
obvious: the "right" answer lies somewhat in the particular
application and the eye of the beholder, and passions run very high
on the subject. But that issue is separate from the main and
important design arguments of this document.
The work done to define "stringprep" [RFC3454] and, later, the DNS
profile in "nameprep" [RFC3491], developed for IDNA will be necessary
to determine which names to actually store in the database. But the
stakes are lower here than the "get it right or fail completely"
constraint of the DNS lookup environment: one can imagine search
mechanisms that would apply a more liberal set of matching rules
(and/or localized and language-specific ones) than the rules used to
encode names (much like recent applications protocols that explicitly
distinguish between the formats one is permitted to send and those
one is expected to accept (Cf. [RFC2822])).
At the same time, it would be sensible to permit short phrases as
these "names", something which is not generally possible in the DNS
(or in the IDNA standards). The necessity, in the DNS, to turn,
e.g., "Lower Slobbovian University" into
"LowerSlobbovianUniversity.edu", and then hope case will be preserved
(or to use "lowerslobbovian.edu", or worse) is, ultimately, just
another example of the unfortunate mismatch between the identifiers
of the DNS and real-world naming systems. So we would assume that it
is a design requirement to make it possible to use "Lower Slobbovian
University" and "University of Lower Slobbovia" as stored names and,
if both appear, to treat them as equivalent or approximately
equivalent.
2.2.3 Case matching
In the system proposed here, case-matching should be treated as just
another case of fuzzy searching and matching, not a relationship with
unique status. As discussed below, in all cases, the user (or her
agent) would provide a string, some subset of facets, and search-
method specifications as input, and would receive a set of matching
results, in the form in which they are stored in the database.
Case matching -- treating upper and lower case letters as identical -
- is another historical DNS property that does not have a simple and
unambiguous interpretation in the real world of non-ASCII character
sets and a range of language applications. Some scripts contain
glyph forms that clearly represent two cases, some scripts clearly do
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not have case distinctions, and, as became clear during the
development of IDNA, there are character-matching requirements in
some languages (e.g., equality of simplified and traditional Chinese
(e.g., see the work to handle preferred forms and variants for those
characters [JET-Guideline], and below) for which the appropriateness
of an analogy to case-matching has caused a considerable controversy,
not least because of the apparent absence of a set of mapping tables
that cover all of the possible character pairs. Even in scripts with
clear case distinctions, it is common to find lower-case characters
with no corresponding upper-case one (e.g., the German Eszet) or no
upper-case character that maps uniquely to a lower case one (e.g.,
"A" in French may maps to either "a" and "a with accent"). Many of
those who have examined the cases closely, including the working
group that developed IDNA, have also discovered that, even for
scripts with the presence of clear case distinctions, the matching
rules sometimes differ by geographical locality.
It is not completely clear how case matching should best be handled.
It does appear almost obvious at this time that the IDNA model is not
adequate for many situations. That model essentially results in
different rules being applied to different scripts: case matching in
some situations, none in others, and some but not all characters in
yet other cases. It may be the best compromise given the combination
of the constraints of the DNS with the idiosyncracies of Unicode,
but, with or without the DNS constraints, we should strive to treat
all languages and scripts in as nearly an identical, or at least
non-discriminatory, way as possible. (A discussion of a
generalization of the JET Guidelines system for reducing the worst
impacts of different treatment for different scripts in IDNA appears
in [I-D.klensin-registration].)
While there are other options, it would appear to be better to handle
case-matching on the server, as it is done in the DNS. As with other
searching variants, it should be possible to return the form of the
name as stored in the database while finding it using any of the
user-acceptable variations (use of client-side string preparation for
both the stored name and query formation, as a DNS internationalized
on the IDNA model seems to require, loses information that some
people consider important). Case-matching in the proposed faceted
system could be applied (or not) as dictated either by a heuristic
using the combination of the language facet and a query containing
the preferred location-context of the user (see below). Or there
could be an explicit query flag (or indicator carrying more than one
bit of information). This author tends to prefer the latter because
of a profound distrust of heuristics, but the question requires
additional study.
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2.2.4 More complex character matching
The case-matching strategy applies to more complex cases of character
matching as well. If one can establish sufficient context, and
specify the types of expanded matching to be used, and permit
multiple variants to be returned to the application, then one could
support matching of similar-appearing characters (e.g., Latin "A" and
Greek Alpha), or Latin-derived and Cyrillic-derived scripts for
Serbo-Croatian, or, perhaps most important, mapping between
Traditional and Simplified Chinese (see Section 3.6.3).
2.2.5 Query formation and specification
As is common with systems of this type, we would anticipate the
possibility of searching on any of the attributes and that searching
on free-text strings would not be exact (i.e., near-match responses
could be returned using any of several algorithms, with the user
making choices). One could also imagine distance function
calculations on appropriately structured restricted-vocabulary facets
being implemented in some search engines. As is equally common, we
should think about user interfaces that store both queries and
response sets so that the responses could be used offline and
refreshed when the client systems were attached to the Internet (see
the discussion of caching in Section 3.6.2).
At the same time, we would assume that a search without at least some
approximation to a name string would rarely be productive and would
expect search systems to be optimized accordingly.
In summary, the goal at this layer is to provide tuples of
human-recognizable (not just mnemonic) facets (names and attributes),
but names that are relevant within the context set by the attributes,
rather than a global system based on the names alone.
The input at this layer is a query consisting of search values for
one or more of the facets, plus information to control the search.
E.g., to the extent that designers of search protocols can provide
the proper tools and terminology, one would expect the query to be
accompanied by rule statements about how much "fuzziness" was
permitted, how "distant" names might be from the chosen ones and
still be selected, whether character set or language translation (or
even phonetic recognition) was to be applied (and whether translation
was to be restricted to a small group of languages or made more
general) and so forth.
The outputs are still being discussed, but would appear to best be
the full facet set of the matched tuple(s) (more than one such set if
multiple tuples match) and one or more URIs [RFC2396] associated with
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each tuple. These URIs, and the DNS entries which they contain and to
which they refer, will generally have the same uniqueness properties
of the DNS itself: while a query, or full set of matching facets,
could match (and return) multiple DNS names, nothing would make the
DNS names less unique than they are today (i.e., as the DNS
requires).
An alternative to using URIs as the return information is to simply
return fully-qualified DNS names, leaving ancillary information about
location of particular information and the protocols to be used with
them, outside the scope of this system. The author reluctantly
abandoned that approach as it became increasingly clear in
discussions that the additional information was necessary: users will
search for information, or a resource and the mechanisms for using
it, and are little-interested in what the network might, or might
not, consider as a resource. Even if URIs are returned, one of many
interesting questions appeared to be whether these search systems
should pass through and return the DNS records themselves (labels,
class, type, and target) or whether they should return names (labels)
and let the applications do the DNS lookups. The latter now appears
obvious, not only because it can be anticipated that some URIs will
not directly utilize DNS names, but because the data expiration
properties of DNS resource records may be very different from that of
a data reference or search result that can point to and rely on the
DNS name. The substitution of URIs for DNS names does, however,
increase complexity and the risk of recursion problems, and that
tradeoff should be understood and appreciated.
For the cases in which DNS-level information is the required
response, a URI type might be created for that information and used
to abstract the return information into something applications can
then specify or decode as appropriate. As suggested above, use of
such a URI would need to be carefully structured to avoid complex
problems (e.g., recursion in either this system, the DNS, or both),
but might be a reasonable approach.
Regardless of whether the output is a URI or a DNS name, DNS
extensions such as IDNA will presumably be applied to them. I.e.,
the process of looking up DNS names that emerge from the these search
components would presumably go through the extended process specified
in IDNA or its descendants.
Experience with the DNS and other distributed databases also argues
persuasively that these records are not forever. Unless there are no
local copying and caching mechanisms (which seems unlikely and hard
to enforce), some type of time to live (TTL) or other expiration or
reverification mechanism will be needed.
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2.2.6 Imprecise matching
In addition to the methods described elsewhere in this document,
there is a long history in the information retrieval field of
non-exact matching systems that could be applied in a searching
system, even one based on an underlying database model of fixed
facets and controlled vocabularies. Ones that might be applicable
include spelling and sound-alike variations, synonyms and
near-synonyms, opposite terms and category negations, and others.
2.2.7 Registration rules and query rules
As with the DNS, it may be more important to be conservative about
what types of names are registered than to be restrictive about
queries. At the same time, if there are well-known and easy to
understand rules about registration restrictions (probaby implying
that the same registration rules must be used globally), it should be
possible to optimize query interfaces (corresponding to "resolvers"
in traditional DNS terminology) to immediately return "invalid name"
error messages rather than returning "not found" after a search.
One could, for example, easily imagine a query interface that would
maintain a local (although periodically updated) table of ISO 3166-2
codes to perform validation against the major components of
geographic names before initiating a search of a remote database.
Similarly, if a sublayer two database was created for a particular
country and language, registrations in it would presumably be
restricted to records for that country and language, and to name
strings that conformed to validation rules developed for that country
and language.
The category lists (i.e., restricted vocabularies) for each of the
facets would presumably come from different, although standardized,
databases, e.g., IS 3166-2 and UN/LOCODE for geographical
information, RFC 3066 for language names [RFC3066], an extended
version of the WIPO-NICE code set for industry codes. But the name
databases themselves would contain a complete set of tuples for the
facets (some, of course, might be missing or, more precisely, "let
anything match").
2.2.8 Server location
The DNS avoids the problem of server location through its strict
hierarchy model: hosts are preconfigured with hints as to how to find
the root servers, and all other servers are found via delegation
records. Since this model contemplates relatively independent sets
of servers for individual records, under separate administration, the
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convenience of the DNS model is not available. Instead, some
mechanism for server location is needed. At least the following
models seem plausible:
1. A common directory of servers, perhaps stored as bootstrap
records in the DNS. The advantage of this approach is that it
appears, on first glance, to be easy and obvious. Its
disadvantages include an implicit requirement for agreement on
how servers for selected and the list administered. Also,
information about prioritization of servers and server search
would need to be provided out of band in some way.
2. Each user would need to preconfigure a server, or have that
information in a client default. That server would be
responsible for determining which servers were to be searched if
it did not have the needed records available, those would specify
further servers, and so on. This approach would be
straightforward and would solve the problem of prioritization.
However, especially for searches for web resources, it would tend
to automatically give the suppliers of dominant browsers control
of server resources and search choices.
3. Some more automated, "rootless", procedure for service location
might be used, as in [Mealling-SLS]. Such an approach holds
significant promise, but has never been attempted at full
Internet scale.
However, this issue may not be as important as would appear on first
glance. Studies of user behavior indicates that they tend to be
extremely impatient. If they have one preferred provider for
commonly-used terms, it may be that, if that system does not find the
information of interest, their course of action would be to abandon
the search (or seek an entirely different method of searching),
rather than to continue to other search services and databases.
Conversely, it implies that a given search service will find it
desirable to either be extremely comprehensive or to use
multiple-server search in a way that is invisible to the user (and
very fast).
2.3 The Third Component: Locality and/or content-domain-specific data
and mechanisms
The problem with the faceted global search model is that there are a
number of usability and marketplace pressures for naming systems that
offer finer granularity and a better match for user needs. For many
purposes, users want localized, not global, systems. This has been
confirmed in those systems which have been included in experiments or
partially deployed (see, e.g., [RFC2345] and the RealNames work and
its variants), which require contextual localization, not a single
global environment. There are many causes for this, but requirements
for very specific searches that are geographic-area, topic-area, or
language or culturally specific, tend to dominate the list.
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The issue is perhaps illustrated by an example. Suppose the
granularity of an entry in a faceted system is
{"Joe's", "UK", Restaurant,... }
Now, one might want to create a business around a restaurant
directory for Bristol. The developers would probably want to
construct a database that contained exact locations, type of food,
menu information, prices, etc., and permit people to query it that
way. That type of product bears a strong relationship to traditional
yellow pages services: the best attributes to collect and the optimal
way to organize them will differ by topic (e.g., for most people,
"menu" has no obvious analogy in an automobile repair shop) and the
business models are fairly established. Part of the history of those
business models is the observation that, when there are competing
yellow pages services (or guidebooks, or other, similar services),
those who consistently make better (and "more accurate") choices of
categories and keywords tend, other things being equal, to be judged
"better" and to capture larger market share.
A related restaurant example may illustrate another important issue:
if one looks for Chinese food in Phoenix, the search key "Chinese
restaurant" may be appropriate and adequate: there are few of them,
and they are not highly differentiated. In Washington, DC, enough
restaurants specializing in Chinese regional cuisines are now
operating that more precise categorization is needed. And, in
Shanghai or Beijing, "Chinese restaurant" is presumably not a useful
category at all: regional or other cooking styles would be key to
finding something useful, rather than obtaining an extremely low-
precision result.
One can imagine many different types of keyword and (yellow
pages-like) directory services of this general character, using
different types of protocol mechanisms as well as different types of
database content and schema. But those services are nearly ideal
candidates for competition: there is no requirement that either the
providers or the services be global or unique or even highly
standardized. Having all three search components bound to the same
data sources and perhaps to the same information retrieval interfaces
(see the developing DRIS work being done by Wang Liang and his
colleagues [WangLiang2003]) --inheriting values from those databases
or systems if one wants to think about it that way-- would provide a
degree of consistency that might be very attractive to users, so
there are clearly issues here that will need to be worked out in the
marketplace.
Directories of these types are, of course, common and widespread
outside the Internet. There is no shortage --some would say there is
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a surplus-- of directories and guides to resources and services of
particular types and in particular areas. Advertising or placement
fees from resource owners support some of them. Others are supported
by book sales or fees charged to users, and still others by a
combination of approaches. Most of these directories and guides
publish year after year and seem profitable.
Inputs for these locally-based systems will differ by service: one
can imagine free-text interfaces and menus (but see Section 2.4 ) as
well as systems that more closely resemble faceted search terms.
Outputs will normally be globally-valid names: URIs, DNS names, or
sets of facets for the global search system. However, since users
are unlikely to distinguish between global, faceted, systems and
these local ones (or even between them and the DNS or other search
mechanisms), it is important that these queries and results be
locally cacheable on the same basis as global queries and results to
preserve name and reference portability.
Summary: Just as the monohierarchical identifier-lookup system at the
basic DNS level should be supplemented by a multilingual,
multifaceted, multihierarchy search system on a global basis, that
global system should be supplemented by a collection of localized,
subject- and topic-specific systems. These localized systems need
not be centrally coordinated in any way, although enough similarity
of function and interface to permit a common local caching
environment would almost certainly make them more consistent for
users and easier to market.
2.4 The Non-directory Search Component: free-text searching applications
The approaches described above omit one set of techniques used today:
"web searches" on full text or its equivalent. These systems have an
important role (and, similar to the localized and topical searches
described here, there seems no particular advantage to trying to
standardize them worldwide). But their disadvantage, if seen as a
DNS surrogate or replacement, is that they have difficulty
distinguishing between the name of something, a pointer to it, and a
reference to, or discussion of, it or how it works. The other
systems discussed in this document are all "directories" in the sense
that someone must make an explicit decision to put an entry in a
database; they are not full text searching systems or analogues of
them.
If, for example, one is looking for a web site for a company, a
search of the local "yellow pages" would presumably find that site
(assuming the company wanted to be found). Global faceted search (or
even the DNS) might find it with some guessing, but this fourth level
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would (as web search engines do today) probably not reliably
distinguish the company's site from sites that reference the company
or its products.
Locally-specialized search produces information that is explicitly
bound to the query, i.e., what one is looking for, while a search
engine returns values that also include sites where the subject of
the query might have been mentioned.
2.5 Database and searching differentiation
In both of the directory-based search components, but especially for
global faceted search, we assume that "compiling databases" (i.e.,
registry and, if appropriate, registrar functions) and "designing and
building search functions and providing search services" are
separate. It would be necessary to have database interfaces be
sufficiently general and well-specified that referrals were possible
and different search services could rest on top of them, but we would
expect some search services to be much more extensive than others and
for their vendors to seek increased compensation for those more
extensive servces. In many cases, the market would eventually sort
out the optimal combinations of capabilities and costs.
Ultimately, the term "fuzzy search", used extensively in this
document and elsewhere, is handwaving. Whether heuristic or
deterministic, one must devise, for each facet, systems for
determining whether matches have occurred and, for inexact matches,
whether the combination of query term and database entity are "close
enough" together to be candidates for being returned as responses. We
can imagine phonetic matching as well as character-string matching,
application of contextual rules as well as simple character-pair
rules for matching of Traditional and Simplified Chinese, and similar
rules for matching of Kanji and kana strings. And we would presume
that users, or their agents, would be able to control such decisions
by choice of search providers, configuration, or choices on a
per-search basis.
3. Context and Model Details: Global faceted search
3.1 The data search and access model
It is interesting that recent IETF "directory" work has focused on
accessing mechanisms without worrying intensely about the underlying
database content, maintenance, and update issues. Those latter
issues seem to be the harder ones, i.e., the difference between LDAP
[RFC2251] and CNRP [RFC3467] may make less difference than how we
structure, maintain, match, and distribute the relevant data.
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Of course, that does not suggest that work on accessing mechanisms is
not important or that it isn't required. And, to deploy the model
suggested above, we will need to deal with a pair of uncomfortable
problems:
o CNRP looks interesting, but has not been widely implemented or
deployed in production.
o LDAP is widely deployed, but primarily in implementations that
contain sufficient extensions and special features to be non-
interoperable. Effective referral mechanisms have also not be
clearly standardized in LDAP, and this might provide a barrier.
Some readers of early drafts of this document have also suggested
that the history of LDAP points to local extensions that will result
in inconsistent search behavior, while CNRP may be better specified
(or at least closer to a clean slate).
If we are going to choose -- and global faceted search certainly
implies a choice -- we need to figure out how to do that.
3.2 Uniqueness of name structures in global faceted search
There are cases to be made both for and against uniqueness of names
(more precisely, of the combination of the name-string facet and all
of the other facets) at this sublayer, and even a partial middle
ground, in which names are unique within a registry namespace, but
there are mechanisms for identifying such spaces so that the names
are unique across the Internet. The community should address the
tradeoffs because no position is ideal; summaries of the extreme
positions are below. In none of these cases is it necessary, or even
desirable, that the name-string itself (without the additional
"attribute" facet values) be unique.
3.2.1 The case for unique names
The IAB's discussion of DNS root uniqueness [RFC2826] demonstrates
that DNS names must be unique, i.e., that there must not be alternate
or surrogate root structures if the Internet is to survive as a
seamless whole and be universally addressable and accessible. Even
with imprecise matching, part of that argument may apply with the
faceted search component, especially if it is the first level at
which names and phrases in natural languages (hence including
"multilingual" names), rather than constrained identifiers, appear.
The mathematical arguments aside, the main argument for uniqueness is
that a given combination of name- string and facets will then yield
exactly one logical host (or web page, or equivalent, an approach
called "direct navigation" in some of the so-called keyword
proposals, see [Arrouye]). If this is not the case, it seems
inevitable that users will be faced with choices they need to resolve
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even when they have an exact match for a full set of facets.
Users clearly prefer such approaches. The often-cited user ideal is
to be able to enter a very short and simple string and have exactly
the desired resource appear, more or less on a "do (or find) what I
mean" basis. Unfortunately, reality has a tendency to intrude on
such systems, as discussed below and in [RFC3467].
If the name structures stored in the databases of a global system
(faceted or otherwise) still must be unique, some mechanism for
registries or structuring of names will be necessary to avoid
conflicts. The problem is somewhat easier than the ones encountered
by ICANN and its associated groups because the very structuring of
the names and attributes creates opportunities for dividing up
responsibilities, but the registration problems exist nonetheless and
would need to be resolved. Consequently, the requirement for
uniqueness is best avoided if that is possible.
3.2.2 Non-unique names
Conversely, one could have multiple appearances of the same set of
facets (including the name-string), such that an exact match could
still yield multiple "hits". This would have the advantage of
eliminating all requirements for monopoly registries or [other]
technical mechanisms for guaranteeing that name conflicts did not
occur. The disadvantage is that it would force more user choices or
heuristics, and at least some errors in which the wrong host or site
was identified would be almost inevitable. Issues of non-uniqueness,
and having to seek additional information to differentiate among
choices, are typical in normal life (see the discussion of "caching",
below); it is unlikely that we can make the Internet different.
As extensive use of intelligent per-user (or per-group) local caches
or directories ("bookmarks", "favorites", etc.) evolve, which we
consider almost certain, they might also make the difficulties with
non-uniqueness insignificant. This would be especially likely if
these directories contained not only a keyword and (DNS name or URI)
target, but also a stored form of the search used so that local data
could be recalculated and replenished. See Section 3.5 and Section
3.6 for some related discussion.
3.2.3 A middle ground approach: artificial uniqueness
A proposal was made in the initial version of [Mealling-SLS] that an
additional facet could be added to represent the registry which
records the names. If this were done, names could be kept unique
within registries and would be globally unique as long as the
registry-identifying facet had a unique value for each registry.
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There would be no need to restrict the number of registries in this
model or resolve naming disputes among them -- each one could have a
unique, randomly-generated and assigned identifier-- so the approach
could provide some degree of technical uniqueness while still
preserving most of the benefits of the non-unique approach.
That model could, of course, be deployed at a "registrar" level
instead, just by changing the assignment of the identifier facet from
value-per-registry to value-per-registrar. Other variations are, of
course, possible.
Whether it is desirable or not is an open question, since it
inherently turns each registry (or registrar) into an arbiter of
priorities or rights to names, or requires that some outside agency
perform that function. There seem to be strong arguments for
avoiding those alternatives.
3.3 Sources for controlled-vocabulary facets ("attributes")
We anticipate that most of the facets other than the name-string
itself will have values chosen from controlled vocabularies. I.e.,
the user-registrants will be able to select whatever values seem to
match their needs, but only from pre-defined lists of possible
values. These are not intended as free-text entities; to make them
free text would push the second-sublayer system toward the lowered
precision of Internet search engines and other free-text search
environments. The facet values that are not populated from
controlled vocabularies will be determined by deterministic and
unambiguous rules. For example if one of these attributes is a
geographic location that uses a coordiate scheme, the definition of
the coordinate scheme should be sufficient to yield a predicatable
and exact value.
The question, then, is how to establish the vocabulary lists and
write the definining rules.
It has been something of an Internet tradition, building on Jon
Postel's principles for registration and registries, to try to avoid
having IETF or IANA become embroiled in controversies about names,
their ownership, propriety of using them, and so on. The use of IS
3166-1 alpha-2 codes as the basis for "country code" top-level domain
names (see [RFC1591]) is just one instance of the application of this
principle. Following this tradition, facets should be chosen, in
part, on the basis of availability of pre-existing, well-known lists
of names and authorities or, at worst, the ability to identify
relatively non-controversial authorities who can quickly establish
such lists.
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Some specific possibilities are discussed in the subsections that
follow.
3.3.1 Discussion of language identification
The IETF already has a standard for identifying languages and
dialects, documented in [RFC3066] and based on ISO Standard 636. It
appears that it would be usable here, with minimum fuzziness
associated with an exact match of all subtags and a higher degree of
fuzziness permitting matching different (national or dialect)
variations on the same language.
3.3.2 Discussion of geographical identification
For larger countries, and areas with many semi-independent
administrative districts, identification of the country may not
provide sufficiently precise resolution. On the other hand, it is
desirable to have a scheme that is hierarchical or that otherwise
readily permits search expansion. Conceptually, the coding should be
something like
country / administrative-district / city or town
Fortunately, such a system exists as a generalization of one that is
in common use in the Internet. ISO 3166-2 provides a model, and list
of values, for representing countries and administrative districts,
and is designed to be compatible with the UN/LOCODE list when those
further subdivisions are provided and satisfactory from a national
point of view. Since ISO 3166 is probably even more satisfactory for
this purpose than it is for its use in defining ccTLD names, it
should probably be used (with the UN/LOCODE where appropriate) unless
something clearly better can be found. For example, a complete
coding using this approach would be something like "DE-BW-DESTR" for
Stuttgart.
The corresponding matching rules seem obvious, but, to review them:
o If the stored record contains all three elements, then a query of
(and fuzziness=exact) should imply that
"country" matches everything "country and subdivision" matches all
cities in that subdivision, but does not match other subdivisions
"country, subdivision, city" matches only that exact stored
record.
o ...???...
The "fuzziness" indicator should be fairly clear here, e.g., 0=exact,
10=match next level ("country, subdivision, city" matches the whole
subdivision), 99=all levels ("country, subdivision, city" matches the
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whole country), and intermediate values might match adjacent cities
or subdivisions using some reasonable distance or adjacency function.
3.3.3 Discussion of Industry Types
The WIPO codes, discussed above, are suitable for companies and
industries of the types that normally use the trademark system. They
are not a good model for identifying individuals, nor are they
suitable for most non-profit organizations, governments, and NGOs.
The facet described as "industry type" here will need to be organized
so as to identify and accommodate separate classification systems for
different types of entities.
3.4 Deployment against the existing DNS base
As with the "new class" approach to DNS changes [NEWCLASS], the
approach outlined here does not require any changes to the existing
installed DNS base. But, like all solutions to the multilingual name
issues, it requires changes to all relevant applications. The notion
of moving from lookup to searching does imply that we will need not
merely to change the code that calls the name resolution system, but
also to rethink the UIs of those applications.
3.5 Thoughts about user interfaces (UIs)
There are many possible models for user interfaces to be used with a
system of the type proposed here. The IETF should, as usual, remain
agnostic about them. At the same time, some notions about possible
user interfaces are important to demonstrate that the concepts are
practical and to inform the design of protocol interfaces. So, with
the understanding that other approaches are possible, and may be
preferable:
As discussions on both DNS "searching" and under the somewhat
misnamed topic of "multilingual names", and the general model
presented here, have evolved, it has become apparent to some
observers that these approaches would be best realized in conjunction
with user-specific directories or memory with refresh capability,
whether modeled on a local directory, or cache, or history file, or
something else. It has been surmised that the behavior of typical
users is to spend most of their time using or referencing known
services and hosts (whether web sites, hosts used in email addresses,
or other services) and much less time "searching" for unknown
resources. If this is actually the case, then a typical reference
should involve a DNS "name to address" lookup only, even though it
would be desirable for the DNS name to not be visible to that user.
The user might reasonably see his or her original collection of
search terms, or a name assigned to that search or its results, but
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actual searching would take place only as a first-time activity or in
the process or refreshing the search and results (at user request or,
perhaps, automatically). An approach for handling these issues
appears in Section 3.6.2.
3.6 Implementation models
While this document is not an implementation specification, nor is it
intended to substitute for one, some remarks about implementation
issues may be helpful in understanding the concepts that appear
elsewhere.
3.6.1 Calling and returning values
While it is not the only way to do it -- and others may be more
efficient -- it is useful for this section to consider the database
associated with a given server/provider as consisting of a collection
of records, each of which consists of a key tuple consisting of one
value for each of the facets, a URI, a text field of supplemental (or
"comment") information, and an expiration date and/or TTL.
The textual field is expected to be useful to the user (or an agent
acting for her) in differentiating between URIs or other target
information. Some structuring of it, and/or tagging of the
information it contains, would probably be desirable, as would some
upper bound on length. A potentially long and highly structured
logical content for this field could be provided by the use of a
reference via a URI, or the primary URI could provide a pointer to
such information that indirects to the actual content being sought.
A query to the server consists of a set of (facet, fuzziness
indicator) pairs, one pair for each defined facet. A null value is
defined for each facet; use of that value implies that any value for
that facet in the database would be considered as matching,
regardless of the fuzziness indicator value. A given server may
choose to reject a query that specifies null values for one or more
facets.
Unless all values for the permitted level of fuzziness are set to
disable fuzzy searching and matching, the list of facet values in the
query need not correspond exactly to any record in the database for
records to be successfully returned.
The server can then return:
o A "not found" response, indicating that no records were found that
matched the facets within the specified fuzziness criteria.
o A response that the query is not acceptable, e.g., because of null
values for specific facets. This response would indicate the
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facet(s) impacted.
o A normal reply. That reply would contain one or more records,
each consisting of
* The facet values as stored in the database
* The URI as stored in the database
* The textual comment value, if any
* A TTL for the response.
This provides information about what was actually matched, suitable
for caching and repeating of the query as needed as well as user
selection from the records and/or immediate use of the URL.
3.6.2 The cache model
The model proposed here is ultimately one of "searching" -- finding a
resource in a way that may involve some interaction between the
various databases and the user. It differs from the "search engine"
approach because the databases are intentionally populated (not
unlike the DNS, although syntax and semantics are different) and the
searches are highly structured. With the "search engines", the
databases are largely populated by automated processes that walk
through the Internet (or the web) picking up data of possible
interest. And the queries use, at most, boolean conditions, not a
structured, faceted, architecture. The obvious advantage of a search
technique of this sort is that it should have good odds of permitting
owners or operators of resources who wish those resources to be found
to have them efficiently found by those who are looking for them.
But it is unlikely that the process can be made as fast or
resource-minimizing as a DNS lookup where the fully-qualified domain
name is already known.
At the same time, the nature of the systems being proposed makes it
likely that a user will think of a particular resource (or its
location) in terms of the terminology used to find it. And,
especially if the user needs to be involved in the search and
resolution process to identify a resource (or resources) of interest
from among those that match a set of facets, users will not tolerate
having to go through the process on every reference. The combination
of these factors makes it almost essential that it be possible to
maintain a local table of references and targets (in DNS or URI
terms) so that additional references soon after the first can be used
by protocols to directly access recently-used targets without having
to go through the search and resolution process each time.
The process of locating telephone numbers may constitute a useful
analogy here. Few would find it conceivable to approach the
telephone system the way the DNS is often approached: to start
guessing and dialing numbers, without prior hints, as the way to find
the correct number for a particular enterprise or individual.
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Instead, people use a number of resources that lie outside the
telephone number system itself to locate a number. These resources
might include:
o White pages directories. These support fairly exact search, but
with some cross-references, added semantics or qualifiers, and the
ability to take advantage of being able to see adjacent listings.
o Calling a telephone operator and asking. This is typically an
indirect method of conducting a white pages search, but may
involve additional mechanisms.
o Yellow pages directories. These are organized by topic, with the
topics varying by locality. One first finds the relevant topic,
then the entity of interest.
o Other sources, such as advertisements, articles, or references.
o The "ask a friend" technique: find someone who knows the relevant
number and ask.
In each case, most users will find a way to remember the number if it
will be used again. They are entered into personal address books,
recorded in intelligent telephones, or remembered in "recently
called" lists. These mechanisms are similar to the "cache" being
posited here. And it should be noted that the mechanisms used are
quite similar to those typically used for email addresses.
"Guessing" may be appropriate for a number or email address that is
already known, at least to some degree of certainty, but is not
generally workable if the target value is unknown.
Even "soon" may be quite different from our experience with the DNS.
With the DNS, the resources bound to names are typically IP addresses
or something similar, and these change frequently enough, often on
short notice, that "time to live" (TTL) values are typically short,
rarely more than a day. By contrast, the faceted name resulting from
a global search, or the information from a localized one, are likely
to represent a fairly long-lived relationship with the DNS names and
URLs that they identify. Clearly, it should be convenient for the
user to reinitiate the search when that is obviously needed (e.g., if
a target goes bad) but TTLs for ordinary refreshing of a search will,
in most cases, be set closer to the order of weeks than to minutes or
hours, with the DNS taking responsibility for the volatile portion of
the references, as it does today.
A facility similar to this is provided for web browsers by the common
"bookmarks" or "favorites" functions, but those support only a
mapping between a user-specified name and a URI. If the URI goes
bad, or the information used to determine it becomes obsolete, there
is no mechanism for repeating the search other than the user's memory
of what the name might have meant. Caching operations powerful
enough to prevent unnecessary searches or user intervention in this
environment require much greater functionality.
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The facility needed here (extended "bookmarks" or "favorites" if it
is useful to think of them that way) can be thought of as a local
cache of queries and responses with sufficient information to both
immediately locate a target associated with the user's perception of
what was looked for and of "refreshing" the search if circumstances
changed or values timed out. The idea of a "search" here should be
very general, and might even extend to a reference such as "I asked
my friend the following question" (we would not expect references of
that type to be automatically repeated, but the source information is
useful). In the presence of a particular query, a client system
would presumably check for a matching cache entry. If one was not
found, the specified search would be performed, yielding values that
might require user intervention for selection. Once selected, the
search, the full set of facets returned, the URIs, and any TTL
information would be stored (possibly using a user-supplied name or
tag) and the resource accessed via the appropriate DNS name or URI.
If the search or tag was found in the cache, checks would be made for
the values being current and then the DNS name or URI used directly,
without going back through the search procedure.
One useful consequence of this is that the number of queries to the
database will be roughly proportionate to the number of new inquiries
by the user (increased by the impact of TTL timeout and
user-initiated repeated search). That number should be much smaller,
and hence imply significantly less load, than per- reference DNS
queries.
3.6.3 An example: Looking at Chinese Traditional-Simplified Mappings
One of the problems that the IDN WG has been unable to solve in a
satisfactory way is the requirement that strings written with
Traditional Chinese ("TC") characters match those written with the
corresponding Simplified Chinese ("SC") ones. The relationships
among these characters have been variously described as similar to
font differences that are not properly reflected in the IS 10646
coding and structure and as similar to case mapping in alphabetic
scripts that support case. Although both are thought-provoking,
there are significant weaknesses in both analogies. But the problem
is sufficiently important that the working group has received
requests to delay DNS-level internationalization implementation of
all (or selected subsets of) Chinese characters.
Fortunately, mapping between TC and SC is fairly easily handled at
sublayer two of the system proposed here. Details and variations
still need to be worked out and a specific proposal chosen and
refinded, but it appears that something similar to the following
outline would be one option:
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Unlike the DNS, the sublayer two system will have the critical
language identification information available. This eliminates the
problems associated with distinguishing Chinese character usage from
uses of similar characters (at the same IS10646 code points) in
Japanese and Korean. Assuming that the language is Chinese,
"fuzziness" could be used to determine the precision of matching
required. E.g., "no fuzziness" might be construed as "exact match",
i.e., no attempt at TC-SC matching. A low (but non-zero) fuzziness
value might permit unambiguous single- character (i.e., "one to one")
matching between TC and SC characters, but no other variations. And
a higher degree of fuzziness might match more extensively, including
cases in multiple characters of context or user selection from a menu
or pick list were needed to determine a correct match.
[[ Note in draft: Is distinguishing between these two cases actually
helpful? I would think it would be useful in the design of
good-quality user interfaces ]]
If it were worthwhile, other variations on a sublayer two system
could be used to handle different character input models as server
functions. For example, use of a different language subtype (or a
heuristic on the name string) could permit phonetic input (presumably
Pinyin, but, if anyone wanted it, a different subtype could permit
use of alternate systems such as Wade-Giles) even though the names in
the database were stored in Chinese characters. Use of phonetic
input of course absolutely requires matching of TC and SC characters.
An interesting approach, using language-specific variant tables,
appears in [JET-Guideline]. That approach is designed to work in
conjunction with IDNA and involves client-based variant tables. With
obvious modifications to bring the tables onto the server and to
treat some of the variants as different degrees of approximations, it
might be even more effective in the environment proposed here.
3.6.4 An example: Distance functions and Latin-based alphabets
The discussions of case mapping for scripts in which the rules are
subtle or culturally dependent has restarted the argument in some
quarters as to whether the case-mapping rule of the DNS was wise. The
alternate position is that users are better off with a single form of
writing an identifier and that they will then "get used to getting it
right". The use of fuzziness with such scripts might permit this
issue to be left to the user or interface designer, e.g., no
fuzziness would imply no case matching, somewhat more fuzziness would
permit case matching in those cases where the rules were exact and
one-to-one, and additional fuzziness would permit matching, e.g.,
with and without diacritical marks or across character variants. The
presence of language information makes these approaches much more
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workable than they would be with the DNS, even with a more complex
canonicalization process than is now anticipated in "nameprep".
3.7 Older applications
To fully realize the benefits of internationalized naming requires
changing all relevant applications to understand the new method,
whatever it is. Even the "internationalize the DNS" proposals are
subject to this principle. Older applications will see distorted and
unfriendly names under some systems, and no names at all under others
(some approaches might cause implementations of some applications to
fail entirely).
The environment contemplated here is a "no international names in old
applications", i.e., "no new names without upgrading", one --
applications that have not been upgraded will not see
internationalized names or other natural-language phrases, nor coded
surrogates for them.
The advantages of a "no names without upgrading" approach are that it
avoids confusion and the risk, however slight, of catastrophe. As
with the original host table to DNS conversion, they provide an
incentive to convert old applications to make newer naming styles,
and newer names, visible. None of these transitions are ever easy,
but it may be worth going through this one to get things right,
rather than investing a large fraction of the pain to get a solution
that doesn't quite do the job.
4. Context and model details: Localized and Topical Searching
...to be supplied??...
5. Comparisons to existing and proposed technology
5.1 The IDN Strawman
After the IETF IDN working group came into being, it rapidly excluded
all models not based on the assumption that internationalized name
referencing issues and requirements -- including the requirements,
not heretofore satified even for ASCII-based names, to be able to
search for things using the DNS-- could be achieved by placing
non-ASCII identifiers into the DNS itself, in some coded form. These
identifiers were commonly described as "multilingual names". That
terminology further complicated the work program and
consensus-seeking process in that working group.
Many of the problems associated with trying to overload the DNS in
this way have been described in [RFC3467]. That document, and the
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experience from which it is drawn, predict that the products of the
IDN WG effort, specifically the IDNA standard, will ultimately fail
if they are evaluated in the context of applications that require
sensitivity to the characteristics of particular languages, rather
than just an expanded set of characters to be used in identifiers.
As implied in the "DNS role" [RFC3467] document, consideration of
language-related issues and their appropriate handling was one of the
primary motivations for the model developed here.
However, at least from the viewpoint of this author, one important
question remains: assuming that the IDN WG's work is carefully
confined to characters and identifiers, does the value of local-
language identifiers justify putting non-ASCII strings into the DNS
even if end users never see them? We argue in section 2.1 that it is
not necessary and poses some risks. However, the "variables in
programming languages" analogy and the "local directory or cache"
approach, both outlined above, suggest that such names would be
extremely useful and fairly safe if the limits of code-point-level
matching and identifier-only use are taken narrowly and observed
conservatively [ICANN-Permitted]. And, if one believes the model
outlined here, or any competing "keyword" model (see next section),
will achieve wide deployment and use, the needs and perspectives of
such systems should condition the evaluation of IDN WG-produced
alternatives. So there is a serious and complex set of engineering
(and, realistically, political) tradeoffs to be evaluated in making
the decision as to whether wide deployment of some version of the IDN
work is appropriate.
5.2 "Keyword" systems
In the Internet object-referencing context, the term "keyword system"
has been used to refer to many different things. Many would fit
nicely into the localized search environment, but most of the
existing proposals put them directly on top of the DNS, or skip the
DNS entirely and go directly to IP addresses. The difficulty with
these systems is that they either must be localized (e.g., a
different system or database for each language, country, or smaller
locality) or they don't scale well. Arguably, some don't scale well
even if localized. In particular, they eventually suffer from either
the "all the good names are taken" problem (of which the DNS is
frequently accused) or they are very vulnerable to poor retrieval
precision properties as the number of names (or keyword combinations)
in the name space grows large. I.e., like so many other ideas for the
global Internet, they work in constrained environments, but cannot
adjust well to large scale.
Adapting bibliographic styles of keyword systems to operate locally
as part the models proposed here would appear to be the best way
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forward for such systems. It has been observed that what most users
really want most of the time is localization, and locally-oriented
keyword systems could satisfy much of that requirement. Keyword
systems would also be strengthened by being placed on a base of use
and language-sensitive naming and searching, and a very strong local
cache, rather than on the low- context, monohierarchical, DNS.
Other types of keyword systems, including the one described by
Arrouye and Popp [Arrouye], are really special cases of the global
faceted search service. They rely on careful selection of names
(and, consequently, resolution of "best fit" and "rights") to achieve
uniqueness and, hence what they describe as "direct navigation" (see
elsewhere in this document). Similar systems might utilize a set of
keywords combined into a phrase that can be interpreted, possibly
with permutation rules, in a search service. In the interest of
simplification and presenting simple names to users, these systems
are likely to omit most or all of the non- name string facets from
user-visible search interfaces. Some further analysis, as to whether
what is optimally desirable is a set of unordered keywords, or an
ordered phrase that might contain such keywords, seems called for.
Different answers could, of course, be implemented in different
components of this model.
5.3 Client-side and server-side solutions
IDNA, and other key approaches considered during the IDN WG's
deliberations, are essentially client implementations, applied to
names before they are placed in the DNS and to queries before they
are passed to the DNS. This contrasts with the existing use and
protocols of DNS in which, e.g., string matching is done on the
server. Ignoring speed of deployment (which can be argued either
way), the advantage of client-side implementations is that they don't
require changes to the DNS fabric itself (and therefore minimize the
risk of damaging existing applications that rely on that fabric).
Because the mechanisms discussed here do not rely on the DNS for any
searching or matching activities, and are completely new, server-side
implementations are again feasible: applications will require
modification to access these services (just as they would to support
a client-side implementation), but older, unmodified, applications
will not touch them at all.
Server-side implementations have several advantages over client- side
ones. If something complicated is being done, it is often possible
to apply more computer resources, or larger tables, on a server, and
to update those resources and tables more easily if needed. And
server-side implementations tend to yield more uniformity of behavior
relative to having a potentially wide mix of client implementations.
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However, integrity protection procedures that depend on similar
computations on client and server, such as those that rely on digital
signatures computed over the data, may not eliminate the requirement
for client-side computations. See Section 10
6. Comments on business models
Historically, the IETF has had even less desire to involve itself
with business models than it has with user interfaces (see Section
3.5). But the approach outlined here, and the protocol and
operational proposals that will derive from it, face a particular
challenge: the DNS works well for its intended purpose (something we
don't intend to change) and arguably works at least tolerably for
some purposes, including as a search engine, for which it was not
intended. Many of us see its quality and capabilities, when used as
a search (or, more accurately, "guessing") engine deteriorating.
Collapse, if it occurs, is still in the future if it occurs at all,
although recent trends seem to point to less dependence on the DNS
before that system passes its critical point (see [RFC3467] for more
discussion on this topic). There are also considerable vested
interests -- both economic and policy control-- associated with the
current DNS structure and arrangements.
he ability to produce and deploy a different model, especially one
that requires new work in several areas, against that backdrop will
be challenging at best. Unless there are clear business models for
doing so, the odds of success are quite low. So this section
outlines some of the business issues and models not covered elsewhere
in this document. As with the user interface discussion, it is not
intended to be definitive: some of these models may fail and others
may be more attractive. But it is intended to provide a sufficient
demonstration of concept to perhaps permit the technical ideas to be
taken seriously.
We observe that a telephone system analogy may be helpful. With the
telephone system, there are registries, described as national
numbering databases, that record which numbers are in use and by
whom. There are white pages services which, given locale and some
other information (e.g., whether business or residential in some
areas) and a near or exact match to a name, provide name to number
lookup. And there are yellow pages services, with precise categories
and organization differing somewhat from one location to another.
Organizations make money at all three levels, but the greatest
aggregate income occurs with the yellow pages services.
At each of sublayers two and three, there are multiple services. Some
of these would probably need to be operated as public goods,
spreading costs over the producers of other services. Others would
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presumably be directly profitable.
6.1 Faceted global searching
6.1.1 Facet listings and identification
For the attribute facets that rely on controlled vocabularies, some
organizational structure would be required to oversee those
vocabularies. As suggested elsewhere, the ideal would be to use pre-
existing organizations and pre-existing lists (the WIPO
classification of goods and services [WIPO-NICE] is an example of
such a list, as would be the IS 3166-1 list traditionally used for
country code domain names. Where such lists did not exist, it would
be necessary to build arrangements for them. The maintenance of such
vocabularies would, from a global Internet standpoint, be a public
good.
6.1.2 Registration and searching
Actual registrations would be required for names and their attributes
with, as mentioned above, multiple registrations when an individual,
organization, or business wished to be registered with more than one
attribute set. The economic model would presumably parallel the
current registrar and registry business, with a charge for
registration (since there is no intrinsic requirement for a single
registry, registry services might well be competitive, eliminating
the need for models that separate registries and registrars. However,
lookup and search activities would be more flexible than the DNS,
with extended services, including character set transposition,
language translation, and potentially more extensive search
variations being potential areas on which providers could compete,
using fee for service or subscription models to support costs.
6.2 Localized and topical databases and searching
As mentioned above, yellow pages and publication of directories and
guidebooks are traditionally where the money has been made. The
analogies apply: one could imagine charging for entering information
into the databases, or for searching, or for information delivered,
or all three of these. And all have been used for papers and related
databases.
7. Glossary
...??See Placeholder...
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ACE ...To be supplied...
Encoding form ...To be supplied...
Facet ...To be supplied...
ISO10646 ...To be supplied...
Keyword (see Section 5.2)
Multilingual name (see Section 5.1 )
UCS-4 ...To be supplied...
Unicode ...To be supplied...
8. Summary
The solution to the "multilingual DNS" problem, and to a series of
other limitations of the DNS relative to today's expectations for
naming and searching, lies in solutions targeted to those problems,
rather than superimposing additional mechanisms on the DNS in ways
that, those who advocate them hope, will not cause problems with
older programs and unconverted infrastructure. Inserting new search
layers avoids those risks and permits a clean solution that is
adapted to the problems, rather than the limitations imposed by
existing properties of the DNS.
9. IANA Considerations and related topics
At search layer two, it is difficult to think about how the system
might function successfully without controlled vocabularies for each
of the non-name facets. As discussed in section 2.2, we have already
established one such registry (bound to an ISO standard), and
mechanisms for utilizing it, with RFC 3066. The Madrid agreement and
its predecessors [WIPO-NICE] provide classifications for types of
businesses, but we would need to extend the registry for names that
are not business-related. The two locational attributes are somewhat
vague at this point, but controlled vocabularies would presumably be
needed, and should, if possible, be drawn from stable, non-IETF, work
(e.g., IS 3166-1 and 3166-2 might provide a foundation, and possibly
a complete list, for the location vocabulary). Curiously, there is
no technical reason why the name-strings themselves must be unique:
that is one of the attractions of a model like this over attempting
to overload the DNS. If conflicts or confusion occur, those are
standard civil (marketplace or trademark) issues that can be resolved
in their own environments, rather than posing special Internet
problems.
10. Security Considerations
Additional layers of naming, searching, and databases imply addition
of opportunities for compromising those databases and mechanisms.
Part of the challenge with the model implied here is to determine how
to secure and authenticate those databases and access (especially
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modify access) to them. The good news is that, since the functions
are new, we should be able to design security mechanisms in, rather
than --as with the DNS-- have to try to graft them on to a structure
not designed for them.
A particular issue is integrity protection of responses and possibly
queries, analogous to the capabilities DNSSec is expected to provide
for the DNS [DNSSEC??]. It would be desirable to avoid having to
make potentially-complex signature computation on both clients and
servers (as in DNS). One approach would be to authenticate the
source and verify transmission integrity, but that may or may not be
sufficient.
11. Acknowledgments
This document, and some related notes, are the result of thinking
that has come together and evolved since before the issue of
internationalized access to domain names came onto the IETF's radar.
Discussions with a number of people have led to refinements in the
approach or the text, even though some of them might not recognize
their contributions or agree with the conclusions I have drawn from
them (indeed, some of those discussions were rooted in challenges to
the general ideas expressed here). Particularly important
suggestions have come from, or arisen out of conversations with, Ran
Atkinson, Harald Alvestrand, Rob Austein, Fred Baker, Christine
Borgman, Eric Brunner-Williams, Randy Bush, Tim Casey, Vint Cerf,
Kilnam Chon, Dave Crocker, Leslie Daigle, Patrik Faltstrom, Michael
Froomkin, Francis Gurry, Marti Hearst, Paul Hoffman, Kenny Huang,
Marylee Jenkins, Dongman Lee, Xiaodong Lee, Karen Liu, Mao Wei,
Michael Mealling, Erik Nordmark, Gary Oglesby, Mike Padlipsky, Qian
Huilin, James Seng, Theresa Swinehart, Tan Tin Wee, Len Tower, and
Zita Wenzel, as well as some memorable long-ago conversations with
Jon Postel and J.C.R. Licklider.
The first version of this Internet Draft was posted in May 2001,
after fairly extensive public discussion of the underlying issues and
required technology during the preceeding nine months.
12. Changes between versions
12.1 Major changes between version 05 and 06
This version continued to tune the document, completing and
clarifying the transition between strict layering and alternative
components above the DNS. Some other issues have been clarified and
more details filled in.
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12.2 Major changes between version 04 and 05
After considerable discussion (little of it, unfortunately, involving
the IRNSS list) about return values and "layering", this version
considerably restructures the model of both. In the return value
case, the output of faceted search is now specified as containing one
or more URIs, not just DNS name(s). There is some discussion of the
motivation for this in the text, but the key issue is that users are
almost certain to search for resources that make sense to them: the
distinction between a DNS name and a URI is too subtle and the latter
does not adequately locate user-visible resources.
The layering issue is more significant, at least in terms of this
work and how it has been presented. Our original assumption was that
the localized and topical searches would rest on top of the faceted
ones, producing faceted values as outputs. After more discussion and
examination of likely cases, it has become clear that the two are
better thought of as independent and complementary models, with each
other and with web searches -- all still layered on top of the DNS.
The text has been changed to reflect this, but might not yet be
completely consistent with it. Pointers to omissions would be
appreciated.
13. Placeholders
For some reason, new ideas or approaches, or ways of presenting or
clarifying existing ones, seem to arise immediately before a version
of this document is submitted for posting. It has often been
impossible to properly incorporate these. The following are pending,
and will be picked up in the next revision:
1. A new section Section 3.3.3 on "Discussion of Industry Types"
that will introduce a better model (and less handwaving) for
handing industry type codes where they are appropriate and
structuring data for that facet for other types of names.
Version 05 contains the beginnings of that discussion.
2. The discussion of Localized and Topical Searching, for which
Section 4 is a placeholder, must still be completed.
3. Section 3.6.3 should be reviewed with people who actually
understand the language and issues and then rewritten (this task
may have been superceded by the ongoing work with
[JET-Guideline]).
4. Section 3.6.4, which is now just an outline, needs to be filled
in.
5. Completion of the glossary, which seems to be necessary for
readers who have not been immersed in, e.g., the discussions of
the IDN WG. This work should be reviewed in the light of the
definitions in [RFC3536] and elsewhere.
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6. The material on calling and return values (Section 4), as
originally prepared for draft version 02, was not coherent and
has been replaced. The material there on the textual ("comment")
field should be carefully reviewed -- it may not be right.
(From 04 -- no comments yet received.)
7. The new section Section 2.2.6 may need to be expanded and
discussed further.
8. In versions prior to -04, Section 3 was largely a discussion of
what was then called search layer two (i.e., global faceted
search) issues, with a few asides about search layer three (i.e.,
localized search). With version 04, that distinction has been
made explicit and a new section four inserted as a placeholder
for a similar discussion about search layer three. That section
should be supplied for version 05.
Most of the references in this document are to examples of approaches
to the systems outlined here, or provide additional information about
the context of some of the suggestions, or are included to give
credit for particular ideas or to better identify earlier and
approaches. None of those references are normative in the protocol
sense typically used in the IETF.
Normative References
[RFC0882] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names: Concepts and facilities",
RFC 882, November 1983.
[RFC0883] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names: Implementation
specification", RFC 883, November 1983.
[RFC1035] Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - implementation and
specification", STD 13, RFC 1035, November 1987.
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[RFC2826] Internet Architecture Board, "IAB Technical Comment on the
Unique DNS Root", RFC 2826, May 2000.
[RFC3066] Alvestrand, H., "Tags for the Identification of
Languages", BCP 47, RFC 3066, January 2001.
Informative References
[Arrouye] Tan, T., Lee, X. and Y. Arrouye, "Keywords Systems -
Definition and Requirements",
draft-arrouye-keywords-reqs-01 (work in progress),
February 2002.
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[Austein2001]
Austein, R., "Private communication", 2002.
[HOSTNAME]
Harrenstien, K., Stahl, M. and E. Feinler, "Hostname
Server", RFC 953, October 1985.
Also Braden, R., ed. "Requirements for Internet Hosts -
Application and Support", RFC 1123, October 1989.
[I-D.klensin-registration]
Klensin, J., "Registration of Internationalized Domain
Names: Overview and Method",
draft-klensin-reg-guidelines-02.txt (work in progress),
February 2004.
[ICANN-Permitted]
ICANN IDN Committee, "Briefing Paper on IDN Permissible
Code Point Problems", February 2002.
Also see "Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Committee:
Final Report to the ICANN Board", http://www.icann.org/
committees/idn/final-report-27jun02.htm, 27 June 2002.
[ISO10646]
International Organization for Standardization,
"Information Technology - Universal Multiple-octet coded
Character Set (UCS) - Part 1: Architecture and Basic
Multilingual Plane", ISO Standard 10646-1, May 1993.
[ISO5127] International Organization for Standardization,
"Information and documentation -- Vocabulary", ISO
Standard 5127, 2001.
[JET-Guideline]
Seng, J., "Internationalized Domain Names Registration and
Administration Guideline for Chinese, Japanese and
Korean", draft-jseng-idn-admin-05 (work in progress),
October 2003.
[Mealling-SLS]
Mealling, M. and L. Daigle, "Service Lookup System (SLS)",
draft-mealling-sls-02 (work in progress), July 2002.
[NEWCLASS]
Klensin, J., "Internationalizing the DNS -- A New Class",
draft-klensin-i18n-newclass-02 (work in progress), June
2002.
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[RFC1591] Postel, J., "Domain Name System Structure and Delegation",
RFC 1591, March 1994.
[RFC1625] St. Pierre, M., Fullton, J., Gamiel, K., Goldman, J.,
Kahle, B., Kunze, J., Morris, H. and F. Schiettecatte,
"WAIS over Z39.50-1988", RFC 1625, June 1994.
[RFC2251] Wahl, M., Howes, T. and S. Kille, "Lightweight Directory
Access Protocol (v3)", RFC 2251, December 1997.
[RFC2345] Klensin, J., Jr, T. and G. Oglesby, "Domain Names and
Company Name Retrieval", RFC 2345, May 1998.
[RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
August 1998.
[RFC2772] Rockell, R. and B. Fink, "6Bone Backbone Routing
Guidelines", RFC 2772, February 2000.
[RFC2822] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April
2001.
[RFC2825] IAB and L. Daigle, "A Tangled Web: Issues of I18N, Domain
Names, and the Other Internet protocols", RFC 2825, May
2000.
[RFC2972] Popp, N., Mealling, M., Masinter, L. and K. Sollins,
"Context and Goals for Common Name Resolution", RFC 2972,
October 2000.
[RFC3454] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Preparation of
Internationalized Strings ("stringprep")", RFC 3454,
December 2002.
[RFC3467] Klensin, J., "Role of the Domain Name System (DNS)", RFC
3467, February 2003.
[RFC3490] Faltstrom, P., Hoffman, P. and A. Costello,
"Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)",
RFC 3490, March 2003.
[RFC3491] Hoffman, P. and M. Blanchet, "Nameprep: A Stringprep
Profile for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN)", RFC
3491, March 2003.
[RFC3536] Hoffman, P., "Terminology Used in Internationalization in
the IETF", RFC 3536, May 2003.
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[SHI-CACHING]
Shi, X. and K. LIU, "Caching Mechanisms in Layered DNS
Search Services", draft-xhshi-dns-search-caching-00 (work
in progress), October 2002.
[WIPO-NICE]
World Intellectual Property Organization, "", June 1957.,
"Nice Agreement concerning the International
Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of
the Registration of Marks", June 1957.
[WangLiang2003]
Wang, L., Guo, Y. and F. Fang, "Information Retrieval
Protocol for Digital Resources", draft-liang-irpdl-03.txt
(work in progress), November 2003.
[XDLee-cnnamestr]
Lee, X. and Y. WANG, "Chinese Name String in Search-based
access model for the DNS", draft-xdlee-cnnamestr-01 (work
in progress), November 2002.
[Z39-50] American National Standards Institute, "Information
Retrieval: Application Service Definition and Protocol
Specification", ANSI Z39.50, ISO Standard 23950, 1995.
Author's Address
John C Klensin
1770 Massachusetts Ave, #322
Cambridge, MA 02140
USA
Phone: +1 617 491 5735
EMail: john-ietf@jck.com
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