[db-wg] abuse-c: proposal

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 12:42:04PM +0100, Niall O'Reilly wrote:
> Two things are needed:
> 
>   o The inetnum: and inet6num: objects are enhanced with an optional
>     attribute "abuse-c:".  The value of the attribute is a nic-handle:
>     which must refer to an extant person: or role: object.  There may be
>     zero or more abuse-c: attributes in an inet*num: object.

First thanks for getting the proposal out so fast.

One comment, unless the behaviour of the db software is modified, we
stilll can't really prevent people from using the wrong address when
parsing the output, actually if you take a look at the template:

role:          [mandatory]  [single]     [lookup key]
address:       [mandatory]  [multiple]   [ ]
phone:         [optional]   [multiple]   [ ]
fax-no:        [optional]   [multiple]   [ ]
e-mail:        [mandatory]  [multiple]   [lookup key]
trouble:       [optional]   [multiple]   [ ]
admin-c:       [mandatory]  [multiple]   [inverse key]
tech-c:        [mandatory]  [multiple]   [inverse key]
nic-hdl:       [mandatory]  [single]     [primary/look-up key]
remarks:       [optional]   [multiple]   [ ]
notify:        [optional]   [multiple]   [inverse key]
mnt-by:        [optional]   [multiple]   [inverse key]
changed:       [mandatory]  [multiple]   [ ]
source:        [mandatory]  [single]     [ ]

We already have 3 attributes with an ip-address (e-mail,notify and
changed) and it is referring to other roles (tech-c, admin-c) which are
both mandatory.

A default network lookup will return all these objects and we still have
to trust (or teach) the person who is writing a reporting tool to pick the
correct e-mail attribute and not something else carrying a space delimited
string containing the '@' character.

We maybe could solve thhis by adding another flag (Shane ?) which, when
queried for a network/ip will _only_ return the abuse-c role and nothing
else.

Doing it like this, I'm afraid we end up with another 'irt' object. Nobody
takes the time to create one and update his inet*num objects and the
'users' still won't parse the returned objects correctly.

I am really in favor for the 'keep it simple' approach, just take that
100.000 remarks: attributes and rename them to abuse:.

That way we have a specific attribute people can search for and not
another generic name (e-mail) with a specific meaning.

I don't like the idea of creating new attributes, but I also have the
opinion that it will be the only way we can fight the problem we have,
getting an annoying amount of complaints in my personal mailbox.

Please consider rephrasing the proposal to:

   o The inetnum: and inet6num: objects are enhanced with an optional
     attribute "abuse-c:".  The value of the attribute is a syntactically
     valid email address (as per rfc2822). Which will handle the abuse
     role as specified in rfc2142 There may be zero or more abuse-c:
     attributes in an inet*num: object.

If you take a look at the template arin uses to present the data to the
user, it uses a distinct name which is easy to parse the output for...

OrgAbuseHandle: 
OrgAbuseName:  
OrgAbusePhone:
OrgAbuseEmail:

It doesn't exactly match the ripe naming scheme, but at least the label
is specific for the purpose.a And that so far has been missing from the
other proposals, including the irt schema.

Grtx,

MarcoH