Of keys and MAXHANDLE

Laurent Joncheray <lpj at merit.edu> writes
 * 	Cool, that what i was looking for. If i undestand the
 * unique key is in the format: %X<value> where X = 0 for an AS,
 * X = 3 for a person, etc... Except there is no relation between
 * the number and the attribute name (*in, *an, ect...) which adds another
 * level of pain.
 * 	As for the 'normal keys' (the one without the %X), why not getting
 * rid of then? When you look up a query, you look at the key the user
 * provide, and you try to gess the type. For instance if the key
 * is 35.0.0.0 i do not think the user if looking for a person name.
 * Same thing with AS1755. And if the lookup fails you can always try another
 * type.

True and not true. For some of the objects the unique key corresponds
to one of the normal keys. For as'es for instance. However, you would
like to be able to get answers for queries that do not specify a
complete key, like for instance a person's last name, a person's nic
handle, a network name etc. The unique key is usually a combination of
various fields of an object, and I think you would like to still find
a match if only parts of that unique keys are given. In some cases,
like AS numbers, and domain names for instance the unique key and
normal key are always the same (except for the %X) but these are
exceptions rather than rules ...

We are thinking however to change the indexing for classless support,
but still want to keep the same behaviour for non-IP numbers. If you
have ideas, let me know.

-Marten




-------- Logged at  Fri Apr 15 01:20:45 MET DST 1994  ---------