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

+1
Andreas Larsen
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15 apr 2014 kl. 15:31 skrev Job Snijders <job at instituut.net>:

> Dear DB Working Group,
> 
> Assessing the "freshness" of database objects can be a useful component
> in many business processes, but as it stands today the "changed:"
> attribute is severely crippled:
> 
> Eleanor:~ job$ whois -h whois.ripe.net AS15562 | grep changed
> Eleanor:~ job$ whois -h whois.radb.net AS15562 | grep changed
> changed:        unread at ripe.net 20000101
> Eleanor:~ job$
> 
> Fantastic! Now we are absolutely none the wiser. :-)
> 
> I propose that we introduce a new attribute called "last-modified" as a
> replacement for functionality offered by past implementations of
> "changed:".
> 
> The "last-modified" attribute is set by the whois server software and
> represents the date and time at which the last succesful modification
> was received by the server. When a user submits an update for an object
> in which the attribute is present, the server software will ignore the
> attribute, insert its own attribute with the current time, and present a
> warning to the user that the user's version of "last-modified" was
> ignored. The "last-modified" attribute should be presented by the server
> software in all types of objects (autnums, poems, etc) for which the
> server is responsible (e.g. do not touch foreign or mirrored objects). 
> 
> The date and time are represented following the ISO 8601 [1] profile for
> complete date plus hours, minutes and seconds, always expressed in UTC,
> including the special UTC designator 'Z'. The "last-modified" attribute
> should be presented above, but close to the "source:" attribute. 
> 
> The advantage is that the date and time are both human readable and
> computer parsable!
> 
> A valid example "last-modified" attribute would be:
> 
>    last-modified: 2014-04-15T13:15:30Z
> 
> I look forward to the group's feedback! Also, I'm interested in how
> people would use this attribute in their workflows or automation. 
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Job
> 
> [1] - https://xkcd.com/1179/
>