[db-wg] Removing personal data from bulk output from the RIPE Database

Dear Tore

Unfortunately no dump will help you with this process. The "changed:"
attribute is almost useless. For what you want to do it IS useless. The
syntax requires all objects to have at least one mandatory "changed:"
attribute. The user can set the date to almost anything. It can be
tomorrow or ten years ago. When the object is changed, there is no
requirement to make any changes to this date or add any additional
"changed:" attributes. It is user generated and only has meaning to the
user. What you want to do would only work if these were auto generated
timestamps by the update software. But that is not the case.

Regards
Denis Walker
Business Analyst
RIPE NCC Database Group


> (Apologies for breaking threading, I just subscribed to the list.)
>
> In general, the proposal seems fine to me and I agree with its goals.
>
> In preparing for my APWG presentation next week, I've been wanting to
> find the answer to the question «how many IPv4 PA Assignments have been
> registered between dates A and B?». I thought I could do this by
> examining the inetnum database export - but that didn't work out, due to
> the fact that all the "changed:" attributes gets rewritten to
> "unread‌‌@ripe.net 20000101". So while I don't care about the e-mail
> addresses, I'd need the dates to be left intact. Also, the current
> algorithm folds all changed attributes into a single one. It's not clear
> from the Labs article whether or not this practise will stop - I hope it
> will.
>
> Would it by any chance be possible to get a sneak preview of the new
> inetnum dump, so that I could find the numbers I want before heading to
> Dublin? If so that would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Best regards,
> Tore Anderson
>
>
>