Changing rrdb objects in the future

=At 02:46 PM 4/08/97 -0400, you wrote:
=>At the last ripe meeting it was agreed to track object history
=>including UTC time zone, although I'm not entirely clear what this
=>means.  Presumebly it means that the changed field will be stamped
=>automatically by the db software with utc time and the from
=>line of the email.
=
=That would certainly sort it out.

  The RIPE-DB WG proposed to have the db update mechanism *automatically*
  tag objects being updated with a UTC timestamp (and some other data).

  This data would *not* be under the control of the submitting entity. 
  It is not meant to replace or modify any data in the changed: field as
  supplied by the submitting entity.

  This change is already on the RIPE-NCC's to-do-list for implementation.

=>  I think another holdup is the issue of the millenium approaching.  
=>The current date format (ie, YYMMDD) will be insufficient for those
=>future dates.  And so this problem must be fixed too.
=>  I would think that YYYYMMDD is an obvious solution.

  The RIPE DB production software already accepts objects with the
  extended 8 character format.

=That will take care of the y2k problem, but won't help those of us in
=unusual time zones... For that we would need something like YYYYMMDDHHMMZZZ
=(ZZZ=time zone). This is a bit more of a mouthful, of course.

  I think local time details (time zones, DST, whatever) should become a
  non-issue as soon as we get the changed: data decoupled from the UTC
  time stamps as applied by the db update process?

=>The db software
=>will be converted from ripe181 to rpsl over the coming 6 months.
=>Maybe when the db's are officially changed to rpsl we can update
=>the objects from YYMMDD --> YYYYMMDD format.
=>
=>ps  Yes, this is exactly the correct forum to bring this up.
=
=Good :)

  Although I wonder whether it would be useful and more consistent to
  convert all the exiting objects from the 6 character to the 8 character
  format and to expand the 6 character format on the fly during the update
  processing...

  Wilfried.
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