whois server features

[ag4ve.us at gmail.com (shawn wilson)]

On Wed, Jan 7, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Bill Woodcock <woody at pch.net> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 7, 2015, at 10:38 AM, shawn wilson <ag4ve.us at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Is there a list of NIC (and other popular whois server) features (what
>> can be searched on) and what data they provide (and what title they
>> give it)?
>
> Heh, heh, heh.  There are just about as many whois output formats as there are back-end data-stores.  Note that I say â??data-storesâ?? rather than databases.  Some of them arenâ??t.  So when you say â??titleâ?? I assume youâ??re referring to half of a key-value pair.  A concept some large whois sources donâ??t have.
>

Yes, I'm referring to mapping between key names.

> So, youâ??re not running into a poorly-documented mystery, youâ??ve run afoul of one of the rotten armpits of the shub-Internet.
>

So there's no consensus between NICs for the information they should
have in whois and what search mechanisms they should provide? I guess
what you're saying is that whois is just a protocol definition and
nothing else?