how to proceed with changed:

Peter Koch wrote:
> > Why not just use NIC/RIPE-handles in the changed field?  As long as the
> this covers only part of the functionality. Handles travel with persons when
> they change jobs. It would be too cumbersome to change all "changed:"-fields
> once a "changer" leaves the registry/company. There are ways to deal with
> this problem if only email addresses are used.

But the point of this discussion was that email addresses wouldn't be used in
(or, at least, wouldn't appear to the casual user of) the database.

If people change jobs then it should be possible to perform an inverse query
on the changed field in the same way as the admin-c, tech-c, etc. to permit
updating of all affected records.

> > 8601:1988, perhaps) would, IMHO, be useful although it should probably be
> > added by the database software rather than by the user submitting the
> > update.
> It could even be omitted as part of the database entry and just be returned
> in a (comment) line starting with '%'. It is meta-information anyway.

If the time stamp is used to prevent out-of-sequence updates (if an update to
auto-dbm gets held up in a mail queue somewhere, for example) then it has to
remain part of the database entry and is not meta-information.

James

--
                "You are not expected to understand this."
                                Ken Thompson, Unix V6 kernel source.