Deletion of German domains

> > No, this is a working agreement about technical details. It
> > is based on the community consensus that domain related
> > information (excluding reverse delegations) should be moved
> > from the RIPE Database to the respective ccTLD databases.
>
> Fair enough, but community consensus must be recorded.  Was
> this consensus achieved at RIPE 36 and we're still waiting for
> the relevant minutes?

Frankly, I don't see what the great fuss is about, Mike.

I think this has been discussed in the CENTR arena, and if I'm
not mistaken there's been developed a consensus between the RIPE
NCC and the CENTR folks for the preferred way forward.  The RIPE
DB's primary purpose isn't to serve as a repository for domain
objects and related person objects -- I have for a long time had
the impression that this has been rather obvious, and that a
better solution for all parties would be preferable (less work
for the CC registries to maintain the RIPE DB data, tighter
coupling to the underlying registry database, costs for running
the system where they can be accounted for, etc. etc.)

Since the data published is in some sense being published by the
relevant CC registry, they're free to do as they see fit with the
data, including moving it to a separate whois server.

That's as a matter of fact what has happened to the .NO domain
objects -- the deletion happened shortly after the last RIPE
meeting (we still have a little cleanup left to do).  The .NO
registry started using its own registry database late last year,
and after that time, the .NO domain objects had not been
maintained in the RIPE database.  Thus, in order to not continue
publishing increasingly stale data, it was seen as better to
remove the objects from the RIPE database, and instead insert a
pointer to the .NO registry's own whois database.

No, this wasn't published to the RIPE lists, but instead
published to those who have dealt directly with the .NO CC
registry previously.

> > You are right, we are moving only domain objects. The person
> > objects will remain in the RIPE Database for several months.
>
> What ever happened to the auto-referral mechanism, whereby a query
> about a moved object could be referred onward to the appropriate
> whois server?

With the reservation that we're talking about the same thing,
that works quite nicely as is for the domain objects.  It will
however by default only trigger if the corresponding domain
object does not exist in the RIPE database, thus the push to
remove the stale data, so that the otherwise-masked but
maintained objects could become visible.

As for the person objects referred by the deleted .NO objects, we
just went ahead and (tried to) delete the referred person
objects, and the RIPE database reference integrity check made
sure that we didn't actually remove objects which were referenced
from other remaining objects in the database.  If the RIPE
database doesn't have as primary purpose to serve as a domain
name registry database, it certainly didn't have as its primary
purpose to serve as a phone book (serving otherwise-orphaned
person objects).

Best regards,

- Håvard