Re: [db-wg] Suggestion: un-necessary error message

[Denis Walker denis@localhost]

Tim Streater wrote:

> At 10:52 15/06/2006, Marco Hogewoning wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 12:23:54PM +0100, Niall O'Reilly wrote:
>> > Begin forwarded message (extracted from a recent update attempt):
>> >
>> > >changed:       Niall.oReilly@localhost 20060614
>> > >changed:       oonagh.oreilly@localhost 20040323
>> > >changed:       hostmaster@localhost 20041222
>> > >source:        RIPE
>> > >***Error: The dates in the changed: attributes should be in
>> > >accending order
>> > >          '20040323' was found after '20060614'
>> >
>> > Wouldn't it be just as easy to sort the attributes into the correct
>> > order
>> > as to generate an error message?
>>
>> Agreed, and as I also just got bitten by this. The strange thing is that
>> at it also reports 'syntax check passed' first and then spits out the
>> error. Isn't this a syntax error ?
>
>
>
> Nothing wrong with the syntax of the statements. It's a semantic
> matter - there is meaning in the content of the statements that
> implies an order. However it would seem reasonable that this be fixed
> up automatically.

We can easily 'fix' this by re-arranging the order of the changed
attributes. But the convention has always been that the software does
little or no changes to users data. If the semantics are wrong, we
report it and let you fix it. There are many simple errors like this the
software can fix. But once we go down this road we run the risk of
automatically fixing problems in a way that the user did not want.

This changed attribute date is one example. This error may be because
the user put a new changed attribute with the current date before a
previous changed attribute. Or it may be because the new changed
attribute had the wrong date, but was in the correct place. In the
latter case, if the software re-orders the attributes, you will not
realise that you have used a date of  200501 instead of  200601. A very
common mistake in the new year.

regards
Denis Walker
Software Engineering Department
RIPE NCC

>
> -- Tim
>