[db-wg] last-modified:, a succesor to changed:

Dear Denis,

> As Job pointed out we can phase in such a change. So if it is decided to remove the "changed:" atribute, as well as communicating such a change by various means, we could adjust the software so that any object submitted for update containing a "changed:" attribute will have it stripped out by the software with a Warning message added to the ack response. This would prevent any update script from failing.

Good idea. If this is a warning only, that does not prevent the update,
I think it addresses my concerns.

> If anyone has scripts that read the "changed:" values and expect to find them, these scripts would break anyway if the attribute is made optional and someone chooses to remove them from their data.

Agreed.

Your other comment about the possibility to delete the "changed:" attributes
from all objects, and therefore make inaccessible many e-mail addresses that
could otherwise attract spam, is something that lets me think we better
deprecate this attribute. I guess the historical values of "changed:" would
still be retrievable with '--show-version n', but at least they would not
appear on the "live" objects.

Best regards,
Janos

> Regards
> Denis Walker
> Business Analyst
> RIPE NCC Database Team
>
> On 17/04/2014 15:25, Janos Zsako wrote:
>> Dear all,
>>
>>> Making changed: entirely optional, and possibly recommend against using it
>>> for new entries, that is something I would be fine with.
>>
>> I fully agree with Gert here. I am sure deleting the "changed:" attribute
>> would break quite a few scripts.
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Janos
>>
>>
>>
>>> Gert Doering
>>>          -- NetMaster