[db-wg] [ncc-announce] [news] RIPE Database: Cleaning-up Organisation Names in "descr:"

Hi Peter, Tim

On 25/04/2016 16:19, Tim Bruijnzeels wrote:
> Dear Peter, wg,
>
> On 25 Apr 2016, at 14:35, Peter Hessler <phessler at theapt.org> wrote:
>>
>>


>> We set those entries with care.  Hell, (let's bring up something
>> older) we even used changed: correctly!  (side note: changed: could
>> have ALSO been used for us to understand why this changed
>> happened)
>>
>> A number of people are very concerned that their objects will be
>> modified without concern that these values have been chosen on
>> purpose.
>>
>> What is the criteria for selecting which objects will be changed?
>> Not set to the previous default?  Multiple lines?
>
>>


> Other than the issues reported by you regarding whitespace and
> contact information in third party tools, we received no tickets.
>
>
> It was definitely not the case that routing was the only concern.
> Data quality and clarity on where to find information were precisely
> why a clean-up was intended.
>
> The criteria for clean-up were discussed in this working group. Those
> "descr:" attributes that have been enforced by RIPE NCC were to be
> cleaned-up, so that it would be clear that a) this is NOT the place
> to look for the authoritative organisation name, and b) this is no
> longer enforced by RIPE NCC (as required by the community).
>
> Third party tools that assume that the "descr:" attribute refers to
> the organisation name will find that this assumption does not hold up
> in general. Even without a clean-up this is something that may become
> modified to something else completed, or outdated w.r.t. the
> organisation name verified by RIPE NCC. Furthermore the assumption
> has never been true for assignments done by LIRs and resources held
> by legacy holders. So, regardless of whether the clean-up is actually
> done, third party tools *should* look for an associated organisation
> object (possibly higher in the hierarchy*). For example, Alex
> recently had contact with Hurricane Electric and they are now
> changing their implementation along these lines.
>
> As I mentioned in a previous email, these concerns were discussed in
> this working group. And at the time there was consensus to go-ahead
> with a clean up. That being said I also made it clear in that email
> that in the light of recent discussions we are looking at the working
> group to decide on how to move forward, and we will only run the
> clean-up again after a consensus is called again by the co-chairs.

Which illustrates why these old fashioned emailing lists are not the 
best way to gather a consensus. Out of the 12k+ members (plus other 
database users) only a handful ever comment on anything on these lists. 
At the moment it is the only way to get any consensus but it is not a 
representative view.

>
>
> *: BTW. Regardless of whether a clean-up is done, we can implement
> something to show the actual organisation name when a resource is
> looked up - similar to how we now show abuse contact information with
> resources.

This would be a good idea. I have been saying for many years the RIPE 
NCC or DB WG should investigate what third party tools are commonly used 
by database users, what these tools do and add commonly used 
functionality to the database software tool set. There are many third 
party tools used for covering the three main functions of the database, 
number registry, routing registry and reverse delegation facilitation.

With or without any data model changes, the RIPE Database should be seen 
as something that provides information rather than raw data. As Tim 
said, using tools like the Abuse Finder or RIPEstat the correct 
information will always be returned regardless of the internal structure 
or storage of raw data.

cheers
denis

>
>
>
> Kind regards, Tim Bruijnzeels
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>> : : :Kind regards, : :Tim Bruijnzeels :
>>
>> -- Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
>> -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
>
>