FYI: List of current proposals

Dear all,

This is my latest (and last) list of active proposals.

There is still appears to be enough work for the new database
maintainer(s) ;-).

List of current proposals:

1)  AUTO NIC handles (included in 2.00 release)
2)  Role object  (included in 2.00 release)
3)  AS macro syntax 
4)  inverse lookup (included in 2.00 release)
5)  whois -tv
6)  referral mechanism
7)  INADDR
8)  NEW (included in 2.00 release)
9)  stronger authorization
10) extended as-in
11) stored/processed attribute
12) name tag
13) url attribute
14) syntactic cleanup
15) WWW-WAIS-database interface
16) whois -H, cgi-bin behavior and HTML formatted output
17) reference exist check
18) don't delete referenced objects

You can find a more detailed description below. Please let the new
database maintainer(s) know if you know of any other proposals that I
forgot about,

Kind regards,

David K.
----


1) AUTO NIC handles:

  Auto assignment of NIC handles

  Current state: DONE
  Time estimation: long

  Syntax:

  nic-hdl: AUTO-#[Initials]
    
    where:  
    
       #         - is an arbritary identification number
       
       Initials  - optional, advises the database software to use
                   initials for the generation of the NIC handle.
                 
    
    will cause NIC handles to be generated automatically.
    
    The number is needed to give the possibility for autogenerating and
    referencing more then one person object (that doesn't have a NIC
    handle yet) under every condition in one
    RIPE database update.

    AUTO is used as a prefix to avoid any confusion between real NIC
    handles and requests for auto generating NIC handles. 
    
    Example:
    
    person:  NIC Handle
    nic-hdl: AUTO-45NH
    [... stuff deleted ... ]
    
    person:  Nick Hansson
    nic-hdl: AUTO-3NH
    [... stuff deleted ... ]
    
    inetnum: x.y.z.0 - x.y.z.255
    admin-c: AUTO-45NH
    tech-c:  AUTO-3NH
    [... stuff deleted ... ]
    
    Will assign a NIC handle with Initials NH and the first free number
    to 'NIC Handle' and NH and the next free number to 'Nick Hansson'. It
    will also fill these NIC handles in the right attributes of the
    objects.
    
    
2) New role objects
  
  Current state:   DONE
  Time estimation: medium
    
    Syntax:
    
    The definition of the object:
    
    - name will be 'role:'
    
    - will have the same attributes as a person object
    
    - will have a 'tech-c:' and 'admin-c:' attribute
    
    - A NIC handle will be generated just as with person objects
    
    
    How to reference the object:
    
    - The object can be referenced from 'tech-c' and 'zone-c:' attributes
      only
      
    - recursive lookups go only one level deep
    
    

3) AS macro syntax

  New syntax for community and AS macros

    Current state: nothing done, need approval of the RIPE minutes first
    Time estimation: very short
    
    New syntax:

    community:
      
      Format:
    
      <string>
    
      The <stringmust satisfy the following constraints and the
      constaints for as macros (see below):
      
      +    It must not start with the any upper or lower case
           permutations of the character "A" followed by the character
           "S". That is, the pattern "[Aa][Ss]" is not legal at the start
           of a community name.
               
      +    It must not be the same as any of the routing policy
           expression keywords. (See RIPE-181, Appendix A for a complete
           list of these keywords.)
                              
           It can expected that the keywords that the IETF Routing Policy
           System (RPS) working group defines for RPSL will be added to
           this list of keywords.
    
    
    as-macro:
    
      Format:
    
      AS-<string>
              
      The <stringmust satisfy the following constraints:

      +    It must be at least two characters long.
          
      +    It must contain only  upper  case  letters, lower case  letters,
           digits, or dashes (underscores (_) were dropped to avoid
           confusion between dashes and underscores)
                              
      +    It must start with a letter
      
      +    It must end with a letter or digit
    
      
    All comparisons will be case insensitive.
    
    
4) inverse lookup

  Current state:   DONE
  Time estimation: medium
  
  What is it?
  
  Inverse lookup makes it possible to find objects that match a certain
  key in a specified attribute.
  
  Example:
  
  whois -i admin-c,tech-c,zone-c DK13-RIPE
  
  gives all objects that have DK13-RIPE as their admin-c, tech-c or
  zone-c.
  

5) verbose templates/whois -tv

  Current state:   data collection (from the RIPE documents) started
  Time estimation: short/medium, see note below

  Notes:
  
  - This will probably be a joint project with Merit.
  - The data collection part takes most time but is needed for some other
    projects anyway:
  
    We need documentation on all our objects for our own documentation, the
    RPSL IETF working group and future work to get the InterNIC and RIPE
    syntax synchronized.
  
  
  What is it?
  
  Verbose templates are meant to give more information on object
  templates then we give now. It is intended that 'whois -v -t inetnum'
  will give the syntax of the attribute (as with 'whois -t'), a short
  description of the attribute and a 'minimal' regular expression to give
  a better idea on how the attribute should look like.
  
  
6) referral mechanism

  Current state:   No detailed proposal, nothing done
  Time estimation: short/medium
                   
  Notes:
  
  This is not a agreed on proposal but is interesting to implement for
  experimenting with the topic, although it is of use for the community
  even in an experimental phase. More sophistacted designs might come up
  that will need much more time to implement and can be regarded as
  separate projects.
  
  
  What is it?
  
  We want to have an automatic referral mechanism that will make it
  possible that RIPE database objects refer to other whois servers and
  your client can then search that servers automatically.
  
  Example:
  
  domain: NL
  refer:  WHOIS domain-registry.nl
  
  
7) INADDR 
  
  reverse delegation integration with the RIPE database

  Current state:   nothing done
  Time estimation: short/medium
  
  This proposal will allow for sending your reverse delegation requests
  directly to the RIPE database. The updated objects are sent to the
  reverse delegation robot after the update succeeded if a special
  keyword (INADDR?) is present in the Subject: line of your message.


8) NEW
  
  Current state:   DONE
  Time estimation: short
  
  substitute the auto-assign@localhost box by the keyword NEW in
  the update to the RIPE database. Only new objects will then be accepted
  for addition to the RIPE daatabase.


9) stronger authorization

  Current state:   No proposals, nothing done, see note
  Time estimation: ???
  
  Note:
  
  - Merit has a mechanism, but it is unclear if it is general enough and
    might need too much human intervention when dealing with a database as
    big as RIPE has. Also, import restrictions might disallow us to use
    Merit's code.
  
  No proposals on how to do this exactly are available right now.
  

10) extended as-in

  extended as-in/as-out attribute

  Current state:   Proposal circulated, nothing done at RIPE, see note
  Time estimation: ???, but probably not too long if Brian Renaud's
                   implementation is good.
  
  Note: 
  
  - Brian Renaud (Merit) has made an implementation and has sent it in.
    I haven't had time to really look at it.
    
    It looks promising. Previous concerns that I had because this
    implementation required certain external tools seems like they have
    been addressed.
  
  
  What is it?
  
  See proposal by Cengiz Alaettinoglu cengiz@localhost is circulated
  to the RPSL IETF working group mail list.
  
  
  
11) stored/processed attribute

  Current state:   Proposal approved. Nothing implemented yet.
  Time estimation: short/medium
  
  What is it:
  
  Attributes added to all objects that contain a time-stamp and serial
  number. This allows for better knowledge on the history and age of
  objects. The attributes will also make the near real time mirroring
  more robust then it is now. In the future features like rolling back
  and forth to certain database states can be supported but need to be
  addressed in a separate project. A proposal has been circulated and
  appoved to the RIPE database working group.
  
  
12) name tag

  handle (Full name of person) data in tech-c/admin-c/zone-c attributes

  Current state:   No detailed proposal has been made yet.
  Time estimation: short/medium (might be more complicated then expected
                   right now)
                   
  The proposal makes trouble shooting with disappeared person objects
  easier (esspecially when person might be located in a different
  database). The proposal als allows for non-recursive lookups in many
  cases when the user has enough info when seeing the name only.


13) url attribute

  Current state:   No proposal yet
  Time estimation: short
  
  What is it?

  Attribute that can be used in any database object for references to any
  other site by using an url.
  
  No exact proposal has been made yet, but the idea seems to be very
  useful.
  

14) Syntactic cleanup

   Current state:   Nothing done yet
   Time estimation: short/medium

   It is perceived by the user community as well as by the software
   developers for the routing registry that some of the syntax is
   unecessary complicated and/or makes more confusion then it solves.
   Therefore it was decided on the last RIPE meeting to remove the
   following features:

    - the ripe-181 line continuation will no longer be supported.
      People that used it will be asked to update their objects.
      
    - The syntactic sugar words will always be mandatory to avoid all
      kind of interesting problems (for example with deletions). The raw
      database file will also contain the syntactic sugar.
      
      We will announce this change long in advance to the proper lists to
      give people the chance to make changes to their software if
      necessary.


15) WWW-WAIS-database interface

  Current state:   running implemention at GARR-NIS available
  Time estimation: medium
  
  What is it?
  
  Check out http://www.nis.garr.it/services/whois.html
  
  and select: 'Accesso via WAIS al servizio WHOIS'
  
  
16) whois -H, cgi-bin behavior and HTML formatted output

  Current state:   design needs to be made
  Time estimation: short/medium
  
  What is it?
  
  There are already several whois client CGI scripts available, however
  many people believe that the HTML formatting could be done at the
  server side which allows for (more) consistent ouput for the users and
  immediate availability of new features.
  
17) reference exist check
  
  Current state:   hooks are available in the code
  Time estimation: short/medium, see note below
  
  What is it?
  
  Checks if the references that are used in an object exist when doing a
  creation/update of an object.
  This is a missing feature that is mandatory in any decent database
  system.
  
  Note: a 100% safe check is very difficult to implement (for split
        databases) in the current code and will take considerable more
        time then the above estimate. However, the simple test will come
        very close to 100% and is considered to be enough for now.
  
  
18) don't delete referenced objects
  
  Current state:   hooks are available in the code
  Time estimation: short/medium, see note below
  
  What is it?
  
  Checks if an object is referenced by other objects before deleting it.
  This is a missing feature that is mandatory in any decent database
  system.
  
  Note: a 100% safe check is very difficult to implement (for split
        databases) in the current code and will take considerable more
        time then the above estimate. However, the simple test will come
        very close to 100% and is considered to be enough for now.
  
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