<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=us-ascii"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear colleagues,<br class=""><br class="">The RIPE NCC is pleased to announce the deployment of RIPE Database software release 1.79 to the Release Candidate (RC) environment:<div class=""><a href="https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/release-notes/rc-release-candidate-environment" class="">https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/release-notes/rc-release-candidate-environment</a><br class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This release introduces the new attributes "created:" and "last-modified:" as part of the first phase of the deprecating the changed attribute in the RIPE Database. You can find more information about the three phases of this effort here:</div><div class=""><a href="https://labs.ripe.net/Members/tim/deprecating-the-changed-attribute-in-the-ripe-database" class="">https://labs.ripe.net/Members/tim/deprecating-the-changed-attribute-in-the-ripe-database</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">It should be noted however that:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> = The new attributes will only be enabled in output this Thursday 2 April</div><div class=""> (because updating all objects with initial values takes a long time)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""> = We have found that we needed to use the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class="">1970-01-01T00:00:00Z instead of </span>0000-00-00T00:00:00Z</div><div class=""> (because it's invalid, and we observed inconsistencies in dealing with year 0 AD different libraries)</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">We will update the referenced article shortly to reflect these changes.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">This release also changes attribute "referral-by" from mandatory to optional. This attribute is part of a mntner object for historical reasons and will be deprecated.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Detailed release notes are published here:</div><div class=""><a href="https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/release-notes/ripe-database-release-1.79" class="">https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/release-notes/ripe-database-release-1.79</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Documentation for this release is published here:</div><div class=""><a href="https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/support/documentation/ripe-database-documentation-1.79" class="">https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/support/documentation/ripe-database-documentation-1.79</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Please let us know if you find any issues with this release. We plan to deploy this release to the production environment on Tuesday 28 April, and we plan to enable the new "created:" and "last-modified:" attributes the following Monday 4 May - after the initial values have been added for all objects.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Please let us know if you have any questions or comments.</div><div class=""><br class="">Kind regards,<br class=""><br class="">Tim Bruijnzeels<br class=""><br class="">Assistant Manager Software Engineering<br class="">RIPE NCC</div></div></body></html>