[DBWG] Order of DBM objects within whois.afrinic.net IRR DB

[Frank Habicht]

Hi,

sorry, for the long silence from my side.

<no-hat>
The current situation with auto-reordering appears to be
- not in line with other IRRs
- hence unexpected by some or many or most users (non-intuitive)

It limits the options to create objects as desired.
If we'd stop the auto-reordering, and a user wishes to have sorted
objects, they can do the sorting themselves.
</no-hat>

Thanks to Patrick for bringing this up.
Thanks to AfriNIC staff for confirming that this an easy change.

I trust we've agreed that the change should go ahead.
I believe we don't need to keep the auto-reordering available as an option.

Since this changes default-behaviour, Nishal is making a valid point
(see below) about informing and warning users about this change.

I will work with Staff to email an announcement of the change to the
members list [correct list, right?]
- approx 1 weeks before change, and
- after change is done

And we should
- update the manual [1]
    (https://afrinic.net/support/whois/reference-manual)
  which - i noticed now - seems to need a lot of love
- add a FAQ entry (https://afrinic.net/support/whois/whois-faq)

Hope this is ok,
please let me have your inputs.

Thanks,
Frank
as chair


[1] actually, "2.2.1 Object processing" and 2.2.2 and 2.2.3 seem to
imply that the auto-reordering is not done....
Yes, the links to html anchors from the ToC on top of the page are not
working.... :-(


On 20/12/2019 12:05, Nishal Goburdhan wrote:

> On 18 Dec 2019, at 19:25, Ben Maddison via DBWG wrote:

> 

>>> For those who need to have the attributes ordered, we could do it on

>>> the fly with a query option (ex: -o or --order-attributes).

>>>

>> I wouldn't bother with that. I can see no use-case, and it clutters the

>> docs ;-)

> 

> it does not seem to me that providing an alternative to people that

> might still want this, is a lot of work either, so i do not see the harm

> in leaving this for people that want it.  unless, afrinic says

> implementing this is tough ..

> and, procedurally, if you plan to deprecate re-ordering (the existing

> default behaviour) you’d need to at least write that up, with a big

> warning label that says : “the default behaviour has changed”, with

> sufficient notice, and why.

> 

> i’m sure the chair will step in to correct me at some point ..

> 

> i don’t intend to hold up what seems to me to be a trivial thing.  but

> in the interests of Doing It Correctly, for when you need to change the

> default behaviour of a not-so-trivial thing, well, you see where i am

> going with this ..

> 

> —n.

> 

> _______________________________________________

> DBWG mailing list

> DBWG at afrinic.net

> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/dbwg