New release of the RIPE DB in production, local-ir@localhost

[Joao Luis Silva Damas <]

Dear all,
as announced last week, yesterday we installed version 2.1.3 of the RIPE DB 
software in our production systems.

This version has been available for download from our ftp site since July 15th.

The main changes in changes in version 2.1.3 are:

- Changed attributes are no longer shown by default in any query. If you want 
to see them you will have to use the -c option. The database doesn't look at 
the changed attributes in updates so if you don't want to loose them when 
updating objects, make sure you first get the object using the -c option and 
update that.

- Inclusion of cross notification in the Routing registry.

For details see the RELEASE NOTES included below,

Regards,
Joao

RELEASE NOTES for RIPE Database 2.1

SUPPORTED SYSTEMS

	This release has been tested with perl5.00401 on bsdi3.1 and
	GNU/linux systems. Please let us know if you have problems
	running it on other systems.

FEATURES

	Changed attributes
	------------------

        This release modifies the default behaviour of the whois daemon by
	not displaying the "changed" attributes in any objects as result of
        a query unless specifically requested to do so, by using the new
        -c whois query option.
        Updates and deletes ignore the changed files so if an update differs
	from the previous object only in the changed fields a NOOP will be
	returned.

	Cross notification in the Routing Registry
	------------------------------------------

        A new major feature in this release is cross notification in the 
	routing registry.
	Cross notification works according to:

	1. Whenever a route object is added to the routing registry, a check
	is done to see if the address space overlaps with that in any other
	route object in the RR. If so, a notification will be sent to the
	submitter of the route object.

	This will always happen and is not dependent on any notification
	attributes described below.

	2. Two new fields called "cross-nfy:" and "cross-mnt:" have been
	added to the route and aut-num objects.

	The "cross-nfy" field:

	a) contains a contact reference, specified as 
        	a NIC-handle pointing to a person or role object,
          	the email address of which will get the notification;
	b) is optional; and
	c) is multiple (so that more than one contact can be notified).

	The "cross-mnt" field:

        a) contains a contact reference, specified as 
        	 a mntner ID referencing the maintainer to be notified;
        b) is optional; and
        c) is multiple (so that more than one contact can be notified).

	This attribute is used to request notifications of the addition or
	removal of route objects which overlap the address space of the
	already registered route objects in which this attribute is specified.

	If the "cross-nfy:" or "cross-mnt:" attributes are used in:

	+ a route object, then a notification will be sent for any
  	overlaps with the address space specified in the route object;

	+ an aut-num object, then a notification will be sent for
  	overlaps with the address space specified in each route object
  	in which the given AS number is specified in the "origin:" attribute.

	The contact/s in "cross-nfy:" or the mnt-nfy/s in the maintainers
	referenced by the "cross-mnt:" will receive an e-mail whenever:

	+ a route is registered which overlaps this address space; or
	+ a route is removed which overlapped this address space.

	If all is well, the former will indicate the introduction of
	multi-homing, and the latter will indicate the cancellation of the
	multi-homing. It is expected, however, that the former will often
	indicate an error, and the latter its removal. Either way, it will be
	useful to know about the registration and elimination of overlapping
	announcements.

	The set of sources searched for these conflicts is defined on a
	server wide basis (CROSSNOTIFYSOURCES in ripedb.conf).


BUG FIXES

	Better check for disk full conditions when writing to the database
	Workaround for bug in perl handling integer numbers
	Performance improvements, better checks on forking and misc. additions
	contributed by users.