Re: Ripe change to whois

[Michael van Elst <]

On Mon, Nov 30, 1998 at 04:58:09PM +0100, Joao Luis Silva Damas wrote:
> Hi,

Hi Joao,

>  Michael van Elst mlelstv@localhost writes:
>  * I'm not sure what needs to be 'rectified'. But if you silently change
>  * the semantics of a public database more than a year after a discussion
>  * that wasn't attended by its current users, then you shouldn't wonder
>  * about complaints.
> 
> Well, Hank is hardly a new user.
> And yes, we took too long to deploy this feature, however, I can't see that 
> the issues would have been different a year ago (maybe I am wrong).

I'm just saying that there was some lack of communication. I think
the RIPE database is too important to many people to modify it as
silently as in this case. The last changes (suppressing of 'changed'
lines and expansion of 'route' (?) objects) had some discussion immediately
before they were implemented in the production system. I'd have preferred
an more explicit announcement of changes, especially when semantics
are changed.


>  * 
>  * But complaining alone doesn't achieve anything. As it appears
>  * the database lacks the feature of an exact-match query and I
>  * kindly propose to add such a feature.
>  * 
> 
> Well the purpose of the design is to give the user information about the 
> parent domain if a certain domain is missing. That's also how the rest of the 
> lookups in the RIPE DB work and is also what you do when looking in the DNS 
> for contact info for a domain and you can't find it.

The point is that it is incompatible. I don't mind having a 'less-specific'
query (although I would have made this an explicit option and a bit more
orthogonal).

It is also not exactly like the rest of the lookups. There are hierarchical
objects (inetnum, route) and there are more individual objects (like persons)
where query types being 'less-specific' or 'more-specific' do not make
sense.

You also cannot do a more-specific search for domains (nor would it
work well seeing how flat the domain tree is).


> May be people now see the need for an exact matching option (there is already 
> one to disable referral: -R). However if you make this the default behaviour 
> then the purpose of the referral mechanism is defeated.

Since I like orthogonal designs I suggest to add an -X option to
return only exact matches for any kind of object.


Regards,
-- 
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