Re: [db-wg] Change of Country entries in the database

[Christoph Mohr mohr@localhost]

Dear Shane!

On Wed 2003-10-22 (18:45), Shane Kerr wrote:
> Daniel Karrenberg wrote:
> > On 10.10 11:20, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> > 
> >>>Indeed, because of this reason, it might be good idea to obsolete
> >>>"country:" attribute in the inetnums. What do you think about
> >>>this?
> >>
> >>Please don't.  99.9% accurate info is better than 0% info.
> > 
> > 
> > I agree with Hank. One has to clearly differentiate between *hard* info
> > that needs as close to 100% accuracy as one can get, and *soft* info that
> > is still useful even when full accuracy cannot be guaranteed. 
> > 
> > Examples of hard info are address space allocation and assignment chains.
> > country: is an example of soft info.
> > 
> > Removing an attribute because its information is becoming too soft should
> > only be done when the usefulness is much less than the current country:.
> 
> Perhaps we should make it optional then.  People who want to maintain the 
> information can keep it up to date, and people who want to use the 
> information will have greater certainty that if the attribute is there 
> that it is correct.

Please don't make it optional! With that reason you can abolish all other
mandatory attributes (like descr, tech-c, admin-c) as well. There will always
be lazy people who don't want their data to be as correct as others want. But
with Daniel's words: "99.9% accurate info is better than 0% info."

> Also, I suggest that it may make sense to make it list-valued.  Right now 
> it is:
> 
> country:       [mandatory]  [multiple]   [ ]
> 
> So users who have networks in multiple countries and want to document have 
> to do things like:
> 
> country:   NL
> country:   BE
> country:   DE
> 
> Or worse, things like:
> 
> country:   NL # BE DE
> 
> Allowing the use of:
> 
> country:  NL, BE, DE
> 
> Would solve this issue.

Good idea. Anything *well-defined* which is easy to pe parsed by PERL is good and
a single line is easier to parse various or a single one.

By the way: I noticed the changes in the RIPE DB you or your colleagues made.
Now we have two versions of "country: EU":

country:      EU                                (e.g. in 194.60.0.0/15)
country:      EU # Country is really world wide (e.g. in 141/8)

Anything new about the idea with ZZ which sounds good to me?


Best regards,
Christoph Mohr
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