[db-wg] db-wg Digest, Vol 44, Issue 7

On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 01:53:27PM +0000, denis walker wrote:

Dear Denis

Thanks for your valuable input.

> Just to be clear, you refer to free text attributes. This has a
> specific meaning in terms of database syntax checks. It applies to
> those attributes where no syntax checks are done, for example
> "address:", "descr:", "remarks:". Is your proposal only referring to
> these attributes? I trust you do not mean all attributes other than

I have deliberately used the "free text" characteristic instead of
<freeform> grammar element used in RIPE Database Documentation.

So, to be clear - yes, I meant also "person:", "role:" and "org-name:".

> primary keys. Incidentally, although "person:", "role:" and
> "org-name:" are not primary keys, they are not free text either.

Taking above into account one can observe that according to the RIPE
Database Documentation "person:" attribute is somehow less restricted
than "address:", "descr:" and "remarks:" attributes (limited to Latin1) ;-)

In contrast to <role-name> and <organisation-name> which use the
"alphanumeric characters" characteristic, the <person-name> use the
"letter" one. And since "letter" is not defined anywhere, my
understanding of this word _could_ be different than yours. ;-)

> Currently there are syntax checks done on these values. If you allow
> these in UTF8 then all these syntax checks will have to be dropped.

I disagree that all of them will have to be dropped. For example, the
attribute length or number of words separated by space is quite
independent from the character set.

Moreover, we can restrict UTF8 in attributes which are not defined as
<freeform> at this moment, to include only those subsets of UTF8 which
covers alphabets used in RIPE NCC service region.

I'm open to discuss this.

Best regards,
Piotr

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