[DBWG] restrict name-space for new maintainer objects?

[Frank Habicht]

Hi all,

in the RIPE DB WG is a discussion about potential confusion and
potential abuse if maintainer objects are called names that look like
aut-num's.

There seems to be a trend towards disallowing creation of new maintainer
objects that look like ASNs (and aut-num objects' primary keys) :
       '^AS[0-9]+'

I am also of the opinion that these should not be allowed to be created.

I tried to test, and created the maintainer AS37084 in the AFRINIC DB.
Successfully. :-(

I would like us to consider whether the AFRINIC DB should implement a
restriction to prevent creation of new maintainer objects with 'mntner:'
attribute (primary key) in the format '^AS[0-9]+'.

Should any other formats be prevented?
Should we force to have all (new?) maintainer objects be with a '-MNT'
suffix?

A quick check shows that there are 30 maintainer objects matching
'mntner: +[aA][sS][0-9]+' .
one has a '-MAINTAINER' suffix
28 have a '-MNT'  suffix
one has a '-AFRINIC' suffix
none match '^mntner: +[aA][sS][0-9]+$' - to be same as aut-num's


On another topic: RIPE seem to be having numbered WG items, so that when
many issues are under discussion there can be a quick reference which
we're talking about - and likely other advantages.

Should we do the same?
Above about maintainer objects could be DBWG-1
And this question whether the issues should be numbered could be DBWG-0

What are your comments?

Thanks,
Frank Habicht
co-chair