You're missing CPAN!

Uh, ... what are you talking about?

I'm well aware of the CPAN modules for querying DNS servers and for parsing zone files. That's not what my question is.

The key question I asked -- or tried to since there seems to have been some confusion -- Is there anything in the DNS protocol that provides "a way to query a server for the list of zones it is an authority of."

My hope being that I won't have to parse zone files, or run any special script on the master at all ... i'm looking for a platform / dns server implimentation agnostic mechanism for clients to ask DNS servers what they are masters of.