[db-wg] Replacing "changed" with "last-modified" implementation plan

Hi all,

On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 05:20:07PM +0200, Tim Bruijnzeels wrote:
> Following the consensus call we looked into the proposal to replace
> “changed” with “created” and “last-modified”.
> 
> Part of this proposal involves the removal of an attribute that is
> currently mandatory, and this has a potential big impact on both
> consumers (querying for objects) and producers (creating/updating
> objects) of the RIPE DB. To make sure that everything goes as smoothly
> as possible we therefore propose a multi phase approach allowing for
> ample testing and communication, and migration from using the current
> attribute to the new ones.
> 
> Phase 1: Introduce new attributes: “created” and “last-modified”
> Phase 2: “changed” becomes optional
> Phase 3: “changed” is completely deprecated

Disclosure: I sat down with Tim to create this implementation timeline.

The main advantages of the proposed timeline are:

    - Two RIPE meetings to warn/inform people
    - Consumer scripts might break after 3 months the announcements (because the
        attribute was mandatory)
    - Concurrent existence of "last-modified" and "changed" attributes
    - Publish scripts might break ~ 8 months after the first announcements
    - In total there will be 5 months of warning-output in email/api/webupdates
        before attribute is entirely deprecated

I think this is a reasonable, careful, strategy. We can re-use this schedule
when we deprecate more attributes in the future.

Kind regards,

Job