[db-wg] Deprecation of DBConstat service

Dear colleagues,

The RIPE NCC has carried out a thorough review of DBConstat, a service
to check consistency of data in the RIPE Database and produce
statistics. It was written over ten years ago and has changed little
over that period. The current software is unmaintainable now. The
results of this review are published on RIPE Labs:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/denis/review-of-dbconstat

The review showed that this service produces a series of almost flat
line graphs and provides an interactive service barely used by anyone
and resulting in no significant improvement in data quality in the RIPE
Database.

The RIPE NCC believes this is not the way to address the few outstanding
inconsistencies reported by this service. We therefore intend to
deprecate this service, then investigate and address the remaining
inconsistencies using other methods, as discussed in the article on RIPE
Labs.

If anyone has any concerns about this service, please reply to the
mailing list within the next two weeks.

Regards,

Denis Walker
Business Analyst
RIPE NCC Database Group