[db-wg] db 1.86 and descr objects

Hi Peter,

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 02:14:58PM +0200, Peter Hessler wrote:
> New member of the DB-WG here.

Thank you for joining!

> Some of our objects were affected by the change to the "descr" object.
> 
> FWIW, I fully support the change to the object type and removing
> required attributes.
> 
> HOWEVER, I am EXTREMELY UPSET that my objects were edited without my
> consent or even a warning.

I can understand anyone becoming upset when they are faced with
unexpected change. I believe a good effort (but not perfect, as you can
see at the bottom of this email) was made to inform the community that
change is coming through updates from RIPE NCC staff to this (db-wg@)
mailing-list.

> 	11 April, clean-up existing "descr:" attributes where the RIPE NCC
> 	enforced organisation names
> 
> In our objects, we wanted to keep our org name in the descr attribute.
> Having our objects unilaterately changed by RIPE NCC as a "clean up", is
> frankly not acceptable.

The goal of this whole operation was to allow the community to put
whatever they want in the "descr:" attribute, if you choose to put your
orgname in there, that is fine. If you prefer to express something else
that is fine too.

Previously RIPE NCC enforced the content of the "descr" attribute, as it
was agreed upon that the contents of that attribute should not be
enforced, on this list an argument was made that by doing a one-off
clean-up you are ensured that no stale data remains.

> And worse, it only affected some of our objects, not all of them as I
> would have expected.  IMHO, the worst part is the "last-modified"
> field was not updated, nor was a "your object has changed" email
> generated.

This is useful feedback, arguments for both updating "last-modified" and
not updating "last-modified" can be made. The mechanics for this type of
operation are not well established. It appears that adding things to
RPSL is quite trivial, (the RFC even specifies "just ignore what is new
and you dont understand"), but deprecating or changing existing
attributes continues to pose a challenge: Not everyone reads the same
news outlets, we have no programmatic way to signal to data
producers/consumers that a change is coming.

> Many people use the descr field for things, as an example: the "name"
> attribute at bgp.he.net.  When browsing through the ASes in Germany, I
> noticed many companies that were likely hit by this (they showed a
> partial or complete address in the "name" field, instead of the name
> of the company), including one of the largest ISPs in Germany.

I recommend that developers of tools such as database analytics follow
the "org:" attribute and use the content of the "org-name:" when it
concerns RIPE objects instead. I would argue that the developer of such
a tool has a duty to try and stay current on any changes concerning the
data sources the tool uses. 

> I was unable to find a discussion of the _clean-up_ in the WG archives.
> Why was it decided not to inform the affected members, or even all
> members via the announce mailing list?  Is that a standard policy?

In August and October 2015 there was discussion
(https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2015-August/thread.html
look for the word "descr"), in January 2016
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2016-January/004970.html
the chairs pulled the trigger and now its been implemented.

The proposal mentioned that an announcement would be send to the
ncc-announce at ripe.net list, but I fear there has been an oversight and
this has not happened. Point taken.

Kind regards,

Job