[db-wg] Proposal: DB object syntax change

Dear Piotr,


> I would like to propose to change the syntax of the role attribute of
> the ROLE object from <person-name> to <organisation-name>

I think this is a very good idea.

> I would like to emphasize that I don't want to change the syntax of the
> nic-hdl attribute of the ROLE object. Nevertheless, my proposal
> influence the automatic mechanism of choosing the nic-hdl attribute
> value of the ROLE object, while it is created with AUTO directive.

Good point.

Another issue will be the query of role objects by name.

The new syntax would allow you to put in the name characters that
cannot be part of the query (see [*] below).

Querying the role objects by nic-handle will still be possible,
of course.

The problem is solved in a somewhat similar way with organisation
objects: one cannot query the organisation by name only by org-id.

Anyway, I find this a minor issue, that should not prevent us from
implementing your proposal.

Best regards,
Janos

[*] quote from "RIPE Database Update Reference Manual, Appendices,
A1. Object Attributes":

<organisation-name> is a list of a most 12 words, each at most 64
characters in length. Words can contain alphanumeric characters,
asterisk, plus and minus signs, forward slash and backslash, dash,
quotes, at sign, commas, dots, underscores, ampersands, exclamation
marks, colons, semicolons, brackets and square brackets.

while, quote from "RIPE Database Query Reference Manual, Appendices,
A1.1 Query Errors":

%ERROR:108: bad character in input: An invalid character was passed
in the query. The only allowed characters are letters, numbers
and -_:+=.,@/?'

so for example ampersands, exclamation marks and brackets are not
allowed in the query.