[db-wg] mntner with misleading primary key

I am not sure how feasible the mandatory "-mnt" would be at this point tbh.
I can easily think of at least 2 maintainers that are actually used that I
see quite often that wouldn't fit that pattern.
There are probably a considerable amount of maintainers that do not follow
this pattern in fact...

$ grep -P
'mntner:\s+(?:(?!mnt\-|MNT\-|MAINT\-|maint\-).(?!\-MNT|\-mnt|\-maint|\-MAINT))+$'
ripe.db.mntner | wc -l
6990

$ grep -P 'mntner:\s+' ripe.db.mntner | wc -l
56524

I don't think we can make 12% of people change their maintainer for this
purpose.

- Cynthia

On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 6:28 PM Job Snijders via db-wg <db-wg at ripe.net>
wrote:

> Dear Tom,
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2020, at 16:16, Tom Hill via db-wg wrote:
> > Unless of course, parsing/filtering before insertion (thus augmenting
> > the database's table natural design restrictions) is not something Good
> > To Do. Database design definitely isn't my primary skill.
> >
> > Saying that, I have long been idly frustrated by the way that mntners
> > seemingly have a reversible, unwritten standard of 'MNT-[random]' or
> > '[random]-MNT'. I can't be the only one.
>
> It is possible to change this, but it'll take some time: extensive
> research to figure out a path which causes the least disruption to the
> fewest amount of people. Ideally only a handful of people have to change
> their "mntner:" primary key.
>
> I think a mandatory "-MNT" or "MNT-" or "-MAINT" is helpful because the
> maintainers primary key string does pop up from time to time without any
> context, and this can lead to confusion. See
> https://seclists.org/nanog/2020/Jan/650 for a fun story about how one
> person's email error code is another person's BGP autonomous system
> reference. :-)
>
> It starts with a volunteer who does some digging in the data to see if a
> migration path can be constructed or not. A conclusion may be that it is
> too hard, but we don't know yet. Are you up for it? :)
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Job
>
>
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