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

On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 05:59:30PM +0200, Job Snijders wrote:

Dear Job

> On Thu, Apr 17, 2014 at 05:36:21PM +0200, Piotr Strzyzewski wrote:
> 
> > 1. Breaking some scripts (already mentioned).
> 
> Scripts depending on the existance of "changed:" when parsing an object
> will break anyway if the attribute is made optional, so I fail to see
> the point. Patching a script to accept ISO8601 string instead of
> "20140101" should be trivial task for most companies when given a few
> months notice. I expect any company with a dependency on the RIPE Whois
> Database to invest at least a few hours per year to maintain the
> software driving their operations. 

Good point.

> As Denis stated earlier, scripts /updating/ the RIPE database need no
> change as the attribute will just be ignored by the RIPE Whois software.

Although I expect that at some point of time, the software will be
changed to throw an error.

> > 2. Some people keep real history of changes using this attribute. If
> > this is going to be deprecated, they would be forced to rewrite some
> > scripts.
> 
> The history is already recorded, and automatically available through the
> use of the --list-versions and --show-version flags. This is real

And this is not true for every object:

$ whois -- --list-versions PS1393-RIPE|grep available
% History not available for PERSON and ROLE objects.

> history as it can show you the actual changes between versions of an
> object. When people deem it necessary to publically record who or what
> made the last change, a "remarks:" attribute would be appropiate.

Which exactly mean that they have to rewrite some scripts.

And just to be clear - I vote for making this attribute deprecated.

Piotr

-- 
gucio -> Piotr Strzyżewski
E-mail: Piotr.Strzyzewski at polsl.pl