A standard API for SRV lookups?

[Stig Venaas]

It's becoming more common to use service records, and there is some 
discussion in the IETF about using SRVs rather than well known port 
numbers, at least to a larger degree than today.

The only way I've found using the BIND stub resolver library, is using 
res_query(), which may not be available in other resolvers libraries, or 
is e.g. res_query() a de-facto standard?

I see a need for some standard call that can work on all platforms, at 
least if SRV records is going to be widely used. For SRV records one 
could extend getaddrinfo(), it seems it can be done without actually 
changing the getaddrinfo() interface, only changing what happens behind 
the scenes (although some new getaddrinfo() hint might be useful).

Any thoughts on this? Maybe this is an old problem, at least I think 
there is the same issue with e.g. MX records... One option would also be 
to get something like res_query() standardised. Anyone got pointers to 
previous discussions on this?

Stig

PS, I know this list may not be the best place to ask, but I hope some 
people here may have thoughts on the matter.