[Rt4-whois] SSAC recommendations regarding terminology

[Emily Taylor]

Hi Wilfried

Thank you for looking at this.  I agree with you that the pinpoint accuracy
of the terminology makes it rather difficult for the uninitiated (ie me) to
tell the difference, and therefore I would be in favour of finding slightly
more user friendly labels.  However, the content and analysis of the
meanings of the different terms are very helpful in my view.

Would you or Sarmad be able to feedback on this to Jim Galvin, who was keen
to know our thoughts on the SSAC study.

Kind regards

Emily

On 3 October 2011 23:41, Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet <
Woeber at cc.univie.ac.at> wrote:

> Emily Taylor wrote:
> > Hi guys
> >
> > Thanks for absorbing the SSAC document.  SSAC have made a conscious
> effort
> > to include us in their draft-report loop in order to help us with our
> work,
> > which is very good of them.
> >
> > For the benefit of members of the team who may be sinking under the load
> of
> > documents to be read, would you mind reproducing the terms that you think
> we
> > should adopt (in the body of an e-mail),
>
> Sure, here we go, although a bit belated, sorry.
>
>
> In Section 2. Taxonomy of Trms, on page 5 of the SSAC document
>
> https://community.icann.org/display/whoisreviewprivate/SSAC+-+WHOIS+Advisory
> the authors set out to introduce 3 terms and abbreviations, see below.
> [For the full text please refer to the document]
>
> <quote>
> When one speaks about WHOIS, it is often unclear which part of the system
> he/she
> is referring to. To avoid confusion, SSAC proposes the following terms to
> better
> distinguish the components of the WHOIS system:
> </quote>
>
>        btw, this text c|should be copied verbatim to a prominent place in
> our
>        document and/or referred to.
>
> 1) Domain Name Registration Data (DNRD) – refers to the information that
> registrants
>   provide when registering a domain name and that registrars or registries
> collect.
>   Some of this information is made available to the public. [...]
>
> 2) Domain Name Registration Data Access Protocol (DNRD-AP) – refers to the
> elements
>   of a (standard) communications exchange – queries and responses - that
> make
>   access to registration data possible. For example, the WHOIS protocol
> (RFC 3912)
>   and HTTP (RFC 2616 and its updates) are commonly used to provide public
> access to DNRD.
>
> 3) Domain Name Registration Data Directory Service (DNRD-DS) – refers to
> the service(s)
>   offered by registries and registrars to provide access to (potentially a
> subset of)
>   the Domain Name Registration Data. [...]
>
> > and any _brief_ reasoning which might assist comprehension.
>
> I think adopting these 3 terms is fully in line with all the discussions
> and
> interactions we had so far, and will help in making it obvious to the
> reader
> which aspect we are talking about.
>
> We may opt to be a tad sloppy and omit the "Domain Name" prefix, where it
> is
> obvious from context (most of the time), but stick to the abbreviations
>
> - DNRD    for the Registration Data itself,
> - DNRD-AP for the Access Protocol, and
> - DNRD-DS for the Directory Service.
>
>
> In a subsequent section, SSAC develops some additional terms and
> abbreviations,
> like
> - DRNDe for "individual elements in DNRD",
> - "internationalised" and "localised" DNRD and
> - DNRD-DSD to denote a subset of DNRD that is made available by the DNRD-DS
>
> While I do agree, there is technical merit in defining this stuff, I
> believe
> that the Hamming Distance[1] is too small for the average reader to be
> useful.
> If your head is spinning now with Ds, Rs, Ns and Ds - you are in good
> company :-)
>
> Sticking to the 3 should be good enough!
>
> > Much appreciated,
>
> You are welcome!
>
> > Emily
>
> Hope this has been useful, cheers,
> Wilfried.
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_distance
>



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