[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>I wouldn't say handle system is a good idea. Take example from Network
>Solutions. Many users don't know what a handle is and create a new one
>everytime. The database end up having tones of duplicated or similar unused
>handles.
Okay, it's time for me to chime in with my bimonthly "dammit, implement
handles already!" rant.
Think of a handle as simply a contact record attached to a domain. The
attachment can be explicit (as in the case of NSI) or implicit (as it is
at OpenSRS). In fact, OpenSRS has four contact records (handles) for
every single domain, because each domain's contact records are stored
uniquely.
The nightmarish system you describe as the worst case at NSI -- where a
new set of handles (contact information records) are created for every
domain -- is EXACTLY what has happened at OpenSRS by default because of
someone's bias against explicit handles.
In terms of handles that multiply unnecessarily, the OpenSRS situation
(four "handles" for every domain) is as bad as the absolute worst case of
how explicit handles could be misused, even if not a single improvement
was made to the NSI system (and there a number of obvious improvements
that could be made, anyway).
Due to the lack of explicit handles at OpenSRS I have 300 domains with
bogus technical contact information that I can't change. I would need to
login to each one and change it individually (which would be bad enough),
but since I don't have the passwords to those domains and OpenSRS doesn't
allow resellers to change them without the user password, it's impossible
anyway.
Well, thank god we didn't implement handles, huh? What a mess we'd be in
then.
<Sigh> If only I'd pointed out nine months ago that this would happen...
oh, wait, I did, on January 21st:
http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0001/0649.html
And in another thread a few days later, Ross Rader wrote that OpenSRS had
figured out the right way to do handles and that "you will be able to use
[handles] within the system":
http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0002/0007.html
I've asked about it a few times since, and been ignored. Sorry to sound
so bitter, but I swear someone at OpenSRS just doesn't get how much this
needs to be changed.
Now I'll crawl back into my hole for two more months until someone else
who hasn't thought about it suggests that the current system is better
than NSI handles because it prevents contact records from being
needlessly duplicated.... Sheesh.
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies
