[DBWG] DBWG-2: proposal to auto-generate contents of the mandatory "changed" field in db objects.

[Nishal Goburdhan]

On 2 Aug 2020, at 6:23, Ben Maddison wrote:


> Wow, it doesn't even check the date? Yuk!


there are some rudimentary checks in place;  ben-from-the-future, could 
not update this (with a future date)
(also, ben-from-WWII-era seemed to have some problems;  but that’s 
likely because computers were not so widely available then.. ;-))



> I am personally not much interested in spending cycles on fixing RPSL

> specs (and this wouldn't even be top of the list if I were).


yes;  accurately populating the contents of the field, is key.



> Given that this field must contain "<rfc822 address> <yyyymmdd>", 

> anyone

> have any clever ideas how to auto-populate it in a non-useless way?

>

> Perhaps recursively looking up an address via the authenticating 

> mntner

> in one of the two ways:

>

> mntner > upd-to

> mntner > tech-c > e-mail

>

> Those both really only on the presence of mandatory attributes.

> Thoughts?


i started thinking about this because of IRR objects;  iirc, from the 
start, afrinic has *required* IRR objects to have a maintainer.  of 
course there is a long list of other objects that are also affected.

afrinic staff listening in, questions for you:
#1 - didn’t you add in auto-generated MNTers a while ago?
#2 - aren’t all new objects forced to have MNTers?
#3 - what, if any, objects don’t have MNTers nowadays?
#4 - how are other RIRs ensuring accuracy?

-n.