[db-wg] Database release 1.83 deployed to RC environment

Hi Denis,

> On 2 Nov 2015, at 19:26, denis <ripedenis at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> HI Alex
> 
> I have quite a few concerns about this new release that I have listed below.
> 
> Cheers
> denis
> 
> 
> On 02/11/2015 11:25, Alex Band wrote:
>> Dear colleagues,
>> 
>> We are happy to announce the deployment of RIPE Database software release 1.83 to the Release Candidate (RC) environment, which has gone live on Friday 30 October.
> 
> Is this a new policy to deploy releases on a Friday with only 24/7 engineers keeping an eye on it over the weekend? Then announce it on the Monday so if anything did go wrong over the weekend users may not realise they are using a new software release?

This is a deploy to the Release Candidate environment that only affected the web interface, not core Whois. As such, this has nothing to do with policy, but rather pragmatism and being agile.

>> This release is still focussed on seamlessly integrating RIPE NCC Access (SSO) into the webupdates user interface. In addition, several other changes have been made, such as:
> 
> I don't see any detailed Release Notes for 1.83 with any references to GitHub issues or links to the new documentation. In fact the Release Notes web page still shows 1.82 as the current release. Release 1.83, shown as a future release for December, refers to deprecating the "changed:" attribute. But that is not mentioned below. Was that done in this release?

Again, there are no changes to the core Whois in 1.83. We did not want to release this code as a bug fix, because it does not affect anything that is in use, nor is anything being fixed. We simply wanted to clearly mark this release. The release notes page has already been updated with the latest information.

>> - Webupdates will show full object details by default
>> - Partial route object creation has been greatly improved, indicating which maintainer needs to complete the authorisation
> 
> Who is this indicated to, the creator of the partial object or the party/parties who need to complete the update? How is it indicated?

I'm working on documentation to accompany the production release to explain all of the functionality. In essence, webupdates is simply clearer in its messaging than before. Here's a screenshot to illustrate:

http://alexband.nl/temp/partial-route-notification.png

>> - When deleting a person object, you will be prompted to also delete the associated maintainer if it has no other dependencies
> 
> Is this just a prompt? I may have plans to use the MNTNER for something else later.

No. In the vast majority of the cases, when you want to delete your person object you will also want to delete the associated personal, unreferenced maintainer, instead of leaving it behind. Thus, webupdates will cater to the most common scenario. If you wish to have more fine grained control over what will happen, then any of the other methods to update the RIPE Database will serve your needs.

>> - When trying to delete an object that is still referenced, you will get a list of blocking objects
> 
> So if I try to delete a PERSON object referenced in 10,000 INETNUM objects do I get a list of all 10,000 objects?

No, the user interface is designed around the principle that an object can only be deleted when it is no longer referenced and that the user knows this. So if they try and we find there are a handful of lingering objects that block the deletion we will inform them which ones. If it's hundreds or thousands, we will just list the number and tell the user to go back because they clearly went down the wrong path. Here's a screenshot to illustrate:

https://alexband.nl/temp/delete-referenced-object.png

>> - Auto-complete of person, role and organisation attributes is now available throughout the interface
>> - The TEST database now has its own URL instead of having to be selected with a radio button
> 
> I don't see any of the above changes referenced in the database documentation. Neither are the changes from 1.82 or 1.81 reflected in the documentation. So is the documentation now considered out of date again?

Again, all of this work is being done on the webupdates application. Versions of this front end application are being released in the Release Candidate environment, allowing us to gather feedback. We've been tweaking webupdates based on the user feedback so far, so changing things in the reference manual at this point is premature. 

Even based on the release last Friday we've been making minor adjustments in the wording and behaviour of webupdates, all with the goal to make the final release production as good as it can possibly be. Please bear with us while we strive to make this release awesome. We will be demoing a lot of this functionality during the upcoming RIPE Meeting, after which we will deploy it to production along with usable, readable documentation. So please watch the webcast if you can.

Thanks for your patience and understanding! We're convinced that users are going to love what we've done. :)

Cheers,

Alex