What does it mean to be authoritative?

[Joseph S D Yao]

On Fri, Oct 20, 2000 at 03:52:02AM +0000, jr. jr. wrote:
> Is a nameserver authoritative for a domain when it has the records for that
> domain on its host - in which case a secondary server (slave) can be
> authoritative for zones in cases where it has loaded those zones from a
> primary server?
> 
> Thanks for clearing things up.....

There are two possible meanings for this.  As usual, it depends on
whether you are looking at it from the point of view of the resolver or
the server.