[Arin-whoisrws] Changes to Whois-RWS

[Andy Newton]

All,

Based on feedback from our presentation at the ARIN #24 meeting and the demo
itself, we've made the following changes to the Whois-RWS service.

1. Media Type Mapping Using Extensions
You can now specify media type output using a convention similar to filename
extensions.  So http://whoisrws-demo.arin.net/rest/poc/KOSTE-ARIN.json will
yield Mark Koster's POC in JSON format. Media types can still be specified
with the Accept header.

2. Text Output Format
The RESTful web service now directly supports a plain text format.  This can
be specified by either using text/plain with the Accept header, or using the
.txt extension (see above).

3. HTTP 404s For Empty Searches
Searches that produced empty lists now return HTTP 404s.  Therefore, a
client writer can always assume a 404 means no data is found.  Previously,
404s were only issued on lookups for non-existent handles and other object
identifiers.

4. Support for Joint Whois
The Port 43 Whois proxy now supports the Joint Whois (jwhois) queries.

5. Less Sensitivity for Handles
Look ups of Orgs, POCs, ASNs, and Nets with handles is less sensitive to
case mismatch and missing handle components.  Previously, lowercasing
handles yielded inexact results, and handles to properly formed yielded no
answer.  For POC handles, we now assume append "-ARIN" if there is no
"-XXXX".  For NET handles, prepend "NET" if the handle does not start with
it.  For ASN handles, we prepend "AS" if the handle does not start with it.

Again, we are open to comments, questions, and suggestions regarding this
service.

Andy Newton
ARIN Chief Engineer