[db-wg] Suggestion: un-necessary error message

At 11:08 15/06/2006, Denis Walker wrote:
>Tim Streater wrote:
>
> > At 10:52 15/06/2006, Marco Hogewoning wrote:
> >
> >> On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 12:23:54PM +0100, Niall O'Reilly wrote:
> >> > Begin forwarded message (extracted from a recent update attempt):
> >> >
> >> > >changed:       Niall.oReilly at ucd.ie 20060614
> >> > >changed:       oonagh.oreilly at comreg.ie 20040323
> >> > >changed:       hostmaster at ripe.net 20041222
> >> > >source:        RIPE
> >> > >***Error: The dates in the changed: attributes should be in
> >> > >accending order
> >> > >          '20040323' was found after '20060614'
> >> >
> >> > Wouldn't it be just as easy to sort the attributes into the correct
> >> > order
> >> > as to generate an error message?
> >>
> >> Agreed, and as I also just got bitten by this. The strange thing is that
> >> at it also reports 'syntax check passed' first and then spits out the
> >> error. Isn't this a syntax error ?
> >
> >
> >
> > Nothing wrong with the syntax of the statements. It's a semantic
> > matter - there is meaning in the content of the statements that
> > implies an order. However it would seem reasonable that this be fixed
> > up automatically.
>
>We can easily 'fix' this by re-arranging the order of the changed
>attributes. But the convention has always been that the software does
>little or no changes to users data. If the semantics are wrong, we
>report it and let you fix it. There are many simple errors like this the
>software can fix. But once we go down this road we run the risk of
>automatically fixing problems in a way that the user did not want.
>
>This changed attribute date is one example. This error may be because
>the user put a new changed attribute with the current date before a
>previous changed attribute. Or it may be because the new changed
>attribute had the wrong date, but was in the correct place. In the
>latter case, if the software re-orders the attributes, you will not
>realise that you have used a date of  200501 instead of  200601. A very
>common mistake in the new year.

Yes, that makes good sense.

-- Tim