Of keys and MAXHANDLE

Laurent Joncheray <lpj at merit.edu> writes
 * 	Ok dudes, i didn't mean to be nasty :-) The only thing i like
 * you to change to your software is:
 * 	Generate a key which reflects the type of the referenced object. For
 * instance if you make a key for an AS, you can generate the key:
 * "*an:AS1755" instead of just "as1755". Same thing for the person:
 * "*pn:AS1755" instead of just "as1755". So nasty people like me won't
 * screw up other nicw people's data.
 * 		-- lpj

OK, let me try and explain the key generation in a bit more detail.
For each object a set of keys is generated (eg firstname and lastname
for persons) PLUS a unique key, which is only used when
adding/deleting objects, never for normal lookups. The unique key for
an object is defined in the config, with the addition of something
special which makes it different from another object that might have
the same unique key. The special bit added is the sort key (also
defined in the config) with a % sign added. So, for instance for an AS
the unique key would for instance be %0as1755, and a person with name
AS1755 would have unique key %3as1755. The idea is basically the same.
There is only one unique key per object. The reason why it is never
used in queries is that from a query you (usually) cannot determine
what kind of object you are looking for (person as1755 or autonomous
system as1755) so that is where the normal keys are used (as1755 as
key would point to both the person and the autonomous system object).

When updating an object, you know the object type, so you can use the
unique key to uniquely locate the object. You can see all the keys by
doing a showdbm on one of the databases. We know this increases the
numberof keys quite significantly, but it helps making things easier.
The routines that generate the keys in the RIPE s/w are enukey.pl for
the unique key, and enkeys.pl for all other keys.

Is this what you are looking for? If not, could you explain why you
would like to see what you propose? The change is indeed quite simple,
although there might be some timing issues, but it could be done.

-Marten



-------- Logged at  Thu Apr 7 20:48:50 MET DST 1994  ---------