On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 03:14:30PM -0700, Steve Atkins wrote:
>
> Mmm. Don't push this line of argument too hard. As I understand it,
> Postgresql is used by the registry to keep track of their customers -
> whois data, effectively.
No, the Postgres back end in the Afilias implementation I worked on
(it is as far as I know still there, but I don't work for Afilias any
more and I don't have any special knowledge about their actual
implementation as in production today) is for the domain name
registry. That means that all the registration data -- which includes
the data necessary to produce DNS responses -- is in that database.
In addition, I worked on and deployed a system that generated directly
all the DNS zone data directly from the PostgreSQL databases.
It _is_ true, of course, that every DNS lookup is not a direct query
of that database system. But unless Afilias has changed their
implementation very dramatically (and I've no reason to believe they
have), you could not get to any web site ending in .org (or, for that
matter, .info, .in, .aero, .mobi, and a number of others) without the
services of PostgreSQL.
Best,
A
--
Andrew Sullivan
ajs@anvilwalrusden.com