[db-wg] Mandatory maintainer on PERSON and ROLE objects

[Apologies for duplicate emails]

Dear Colleagues,

The Data Protection Task Force asked the RIPE NCC to enforce maintaining
all data in the RIPE Database. Currently, the "mnt-by:" attribute is
optional in PERSON and ROLE objects.

The RIPE NCC has now made this attribute mandatory in both these object
types in a test environment. We recommend that anyone who uses automated
scripts to generate or modify these objects should test their procedures
and scripts against the test facilities. The test server has a recent
copy of the RIPE Database data.

One significant effect of this change is the circular dependency between
PERSON and MNTNER objects. For a new user with no data in the RIPE
Database, these two objects must be created together. This cannot be
done by the normal update methods. There is a new user start-up
interface that creates this pair of objects:
https://www.db.ripe.net/cgi-bin/new-user-startup.pl

This start-up process is described in the new RIPE Database Update
Reference Manual:
http://www.ripe.net/db/docs.html

The test service is available on a test server at the following URL:
whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net

Queries to this database instance can be directed to:
whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net:43

Email updates can be sent to<auto-dbm-mandatory-mntby at ripe.net>.

Synchronous updates are available at:
https://syncupdates-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net/

Near Real-Time Mirror (NRTM) access is available at:
whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net:4444

Regards
Denis Walker
Business Analyst
RIPE NCC Database Group