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Re: SDSI syntax
At 15.59 96-04-29, Simon Spero wrote:
>Whois++ (and in general all RFC822 derived formats) are basically flat.
What we did in Whois++ was to define that:
1) One attribute name can occur several times (as in RFC-822)
2) The order of the attributes are significant (which is not the case
in RFC-822)
By using this grouping functionality in Whois++ one can simulate
"nesting", and we choose this because of implementation constraints.
Keeping track of arbitrary order and multiple attribute names can
be hard enough for a server, but keeping track of real object oriented
structures are a totally different thing. Especially when you start
searching in the object.
Say that you have
(a: foo)
(b: (c: bar)
(d: fratz))
Should you be able to search on "d=fratz", "b.d=fratz" ?
In Whois++ you can express this as
a: foo
start: b
c: bar
d: fratz
end: b
I.e. by including "fake" attribute values, the client can parse this
and recreate the nesting. The query syntax becomes simpler, and that
_is_ sometimes a good thing (tm).
paf