[db-wg] db 1.86 and descr objects

On 2016 Apr 15 (Fri) at 17:50:02 +0200 (+0200), Tim Bruijnzeels wrote:
:Dear working group,
:
:As announced on Wednesday we reverted the formatting change introduced by the "descr:" clean-up. Out of 93,015 objects, 323 were not reverted automatically because the user had made changes since the script ran. In cases where users fixed the whitespace we left the objects as they are. We have dealt with the others on case by case basis - taking care that we only revert the formatting problems we caused.
:

Thank you.  I think that was the correct steps to take.


:This means that "descr:" is back for the moment.
:
:With regards to the warning given about this change. It was a conscious decision not to send notification for 93,015 objects because this would overwhelm our support queue with questions, regarding what we believed was change that was discussed in this working group, and that would have little or no operational impact. But as Job mentioned, even though this change was discussed at length in this working group, not warning ncc-announce in advance was an oversight. 
:
:Going forward we suggest that we postpone the clean-up, 

Agreed.

:warn ncc-announce in advance, 

Agreed.

:and only run the clean-up some time later allowing stakeholders to be warned, and possible follow-up discussion to be had in this working group.

I'll respond to this point, in a reply to another email in this thread.


:
:Kind regards
:
:Tim Bruijnzeels
:Assistant Manager Software Engineering
:RIPE NCC Database Group
:
:
:
:
:
:> On 15 Apr 2016, at 17:03, Job Snijders <job at instituut.net> wrote:
:> 
:> 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
:> 
:

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