Re: "changed" field should be deleted

[David Kessens <]

Dale,

On Sat, Jun 06, 1998 at 02:16:00AM +0100, Dale Amon as Operator wrote:
> >Al these uses are not very well served by the 'changed:' field right
> >now. People can change them at will (fun to confuse people), the
> >timestamp is not UTC (very annoying for people living in other
> >timezones) and it doesn't provide the time of changes (interesting if
> >you make more then one change a day).
> 
> I think we look at this field in a very different way.

I can agree on this one ;-).

> For all I
> care it could be my own internal person-id and date that is
> indecipherable to anyone else. It doesn't matter to me about
> UTC either because my own time zone doesn't change...

But people that are querying your data are coming from different time
zones, whether you like it or not. My database 'person:' object is
stored in the RIPE database from the times when I was still working at
the RIPE NCC. Now, I have a 9 hour time difference. The working area
of the RIPE NCC is quite big and it does go over many time zone
boundaries. Replies regarding the 'changed:' attribute discussion came
from people at the US east coast, west coast, new zealand and europe ...

> perhaps 
> this would matter to an international backbone provider with NOC's
> in multiple time zones... so I guess I can see that point, but
> only if you happen to be such an entity.

This is a problem for everybody that is located quite some hours from
the database. You don't need to be a backbone provider for that.

> Why even define it to be an email address? Why not just make it
> 
> 	change:	company-internal-id company-internal-date-fmt

There is no need to have a 'changed:' attribute if you want to have
some private data stored. The 'remarks:' attribute let's you add the
private extensions that you want and in a format that you like (as
you can see in many 'remarks:' attribute lines).

The RIPE database is intended to store useful public information.
Furthermore, this information should be as constitent as possible to
make it most useful for it's users. The 'changed:' attribute doesn't
really help in this effort due to it's fuzzy definition.

David K.
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