another lookup problem

Hi David,

> database serving as a simple registered object lookup mechanism is
> that you don't have to worry (too much) about gunk like local language
> support -- the registration database access method (whois) allows
> lookups on registry objects, namely inetnums, handles, domains, route
> objects, etc. of which people (generally :-)) are not a part.
> 
> Yes, I'm arguing person: field contents should not be indexed, but
> I've been known as a radical in the past.  Note this would have
> solved the problem that brought this issue up (I think).

> I'm of the "simpler is better" camp.  It would be nice if registry

There are more radical approaches possible like just stopping the whois
service alltogether. People can easily get the ftp files and run grep.
It's much simpler and solves the problem completely :-).

> objects were defined to be strictly hierarchical in nature (addresses
> and domains are already there, handles are soon to be there with the
> addition of the -<registry> suffix (APNIC's will be -AP (not -APNIC)
> as soon as I can find time to write the necessary software to do the
> conversion), AS numbers are somewhat problematic, but there are only

This is very much appreciated. Why don't you choose the more radical
approach and use the APNIC extension when you are already doing an
conversion? It is much easier for everybody if the 'source:' and NIC
handle postfix match (we can do some automatic referral tricks when we
standarize on this, and yes we can also make the 'source:' names
hierarchical).

David K.