Where is the “whois” database? [closed]

Question

Websites like reviews.gcoupon.com, whois.com, domaintools.com gives you all the information regarding a website like server location, registrant, expiring date all the other information. But I wonder from where these websites get all this information?

Answer 1

WHOIS database has two models

1. Thick - One Database stores whole WHOIS data for a particular domain, say .com from all registrars
2. Thin - In this model, data is stored on registrar's server.

WHOIS database query can be done using command line based utilities.

Now a days, modern TCP/IP implementation comes with whois utility and you can perform query as below

whois  [-h <whois-host>] <domain>

Here is the domain name for which you want to perform whois query. You can use -h parameter to force program to use particular whois server but if you dont use it, program will find whois server automatically.

I can't be sure about what above mentioned sites use but I can say they maybe by executing shell command using PHP or whatever server-side language they may be using and format the response to display the specific details.