New DB release 2.3.1

Dear colleagues,

 We have made available the new release of RIPE Perl database
software at our fto site. You can find it at

 ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/software/ripe-dbase-2.3.1.tar.gz

Please find attached notes of the new release.


Best regards,

RIPE NCC DB Group
-----------------


RELEASE NOTES for RIPE Database 2.3.1

This is a bugfix release with no new functionality
added. There are some operational changes which should be
transparent to the end user but ease the database
maintenance and (dramatically) improve performance.

SUPPORTED SYSTEMS
=================
This release has been tested with perl 5.004_04 on bsdi3.1
and Solaris 2.6 systems. Please let us know if you have
problems running it on other systems.


CHANGES
=======
Incorporated MAXLISTLENGTH and MAXSTRINGCOMPONENTS variables into
the configuration file. They define the internal buffer sizes
for reindexing; MAXLISTLENGTH defines the max length of the list
of index entries, MAXSTRINGCOMPONENTS (name preserved for historical reasons)
determines the number of entries for classless indices.

Whoisd: added a 3 seconds delay before denied connections are dropped.

In the inet6num objects, quads are zero padded to improve readability.

Comparison of objects set to ignore the differences in number of whitespaces.


BUG FIXES
=========
Maintainer checks for dbupdate -T (test database) were not correct.

Fixed setpriority parameters for whoisd {-L|-M|-m}.

If invoked with wrong uid, dbupdate would fail silently. Now prints a message
and exits 75.

A range in class A ending with ?.?.?.0 would be changed to ?.255.255.255.
Also fixed /32 ranges (beginning=end).


PERFORMANCE FIXES
=================
Turning splits and joins into a regexp substitution in key handling code
decreased the CPU usage.

Nic-handle generation algorithm takes 30-40 steps now instead of up to a few
thousand.