adding new attributes (and objects)

hi,
I don't know if anyone is listening this weekend, but just in case,
I'm trying to work on this so if you have a minute...

I would like to add some new attributes to one of our dbs.
I have added to the conf file the line:

ATTR    dr  db-reference

for the new attribute, and to the object I added dr to:

OBJ in  OPT     as bl co ch gw ii ni no rl rm rz ny ma dr

(I of course checked to be sure dr was not used already.)

Then I just tried to update a net giving a value to dr.
(an arbitrary string...no changes to syntax.pl yet.)
It gives me the message:

*ERROR*:   attribute "db-reference" unknown in inetnum object

So...it knows enough to expand the the abbreviation
(since the line in the update file is 'dr: rlr'),
but it doesn't recognize the attribute in the net object.

So...what am I missing/not doing here?

----
A more general question:

We are planning to add some additional attributes, some mandatory to our db file.
To do that, we will of course have to change the conf file here.
I am assuming that won't make a problem for us importing (by ftp of diff's or whatever)
your ripe.db, since we won't be trying to update the objects in that db.
That is, as I undestand things, these additions to the conf file
will only effect things on input of objects, which will be into our db file. 
Thus, it won't affect lookups that expect to search
both our and your db files here, so your db file will work just fine.

Am I understanding things correctly?

thanks!

  - r

ps of course for export of our files to you, we also will have to
   write out objects without attributes you don't have.



-------- Logged at  Sat Feb 26 16:52:09 MET 1994  ---------