updating a person object

     > What I mean is that a handle lives as long as the object it identifies.
     > If the object is deleted that handle is not reused to identify a
     > different object.

     So the handle is deleted if it's only referenced in *this* (also
     deleted) certain object? And the handle itself (XY123-RIPE) will
     not be used again, right?

     Not much harm, but not needed, IMO.

I would suggest that if the handle could be referenced elsewhere then
you don't delete it even if you think it's not referenced. We
reference (person) objects that aren't in our DB and so having the
object referenced disappear would be a really bad idea.

Before someone says well don't do that consider that you have a hard
enough time keeping one person object up to date and so it is better
to reference this "master" object than to create another one which in
time will be forgotten about. In most cases the "master" is an
InterNIC handle but need not be.

Mark.