[db-wg] Proposal: DB object syntax change

On Wed, Feb 05, 2014 at 10:52:25AM +0100, Janos Zsako wrote:

Dear Janos

>> I would like to propose to change the syntax of the role attribute of
>> the ROLE object from <person-name> to <organisation-name>
>
> I think this is a very good idea.
>
>> I would like to emphasize that I don't want to change the syntax of the
>> nic-hdl attribute of the ROLE object. Nevertheless, my proposal
>> influence the automatic mechanism of choosing the nic-hdl attribute
>> value of the ROLE object, while it is created with AUTO directive.
>
> Good point.
>
> Another issue will be the query of role objects by name.
>
> The new syntax would allow you to put in the name characters that
> cannot be part of the query (see [*] below).
>
> Querying the role objects by nic-handle will still be possible,
> of course.
>
> The problem is solved in a somewhat similar way with organisation
> objects: one cannot query the organisation by name only by org-id.
>
> Anyway, I find this a minor issue, that should not prevent us from
> implementing your proposal.
>
> Best regards,
> Janos
>
> [*] quote from "RIPE Database Update Reference Manual, Appendices,
> A1. Object Attributes":
>
> <organisation-name> is a list of a most 12 words, each at most 64
> characters in length. Words can contain alphanumeric characters,
> asterisk, plus and minus signs, forward slash and backslash, dash,
> quotes, at sign, commas, dots, underscores, ampersands, exclamation
> marks, colons, semicolons, brackets and square brackets.
>
> while, quote from "RIPE Database Query Reference Manual, Appendices,
> A1.1 Query Errors":
>
> %ERROR:108: bad character in input: An invalid character was passed
> in the query. The only allowed characters are letters, numbers
> and -_:+=.,@/?'
>
> so for example ampersands, exclamation marks and brackets are not
> allowed in the query.

This is very good point. However when I tried to reproduce it I have got
another error:

$ whois 'test !*&[] test'

%ERROR:101: no entries found

While using https://apps.db.ripe.net/search/query.html search form I
have got 'Warning! No objects matched your search criteria.'

So, I created the ORGANISATION object with the org-name filled with
'test !*&[] test' (without quotes) and I was able to query it by name as
described above.

I know that documentation is currently outdated. For example
<person-name> is defined as not allowing '"Dr", "Prof", "Mv", "Ms",
"Mr", no matter whether they end with dot (".") or not', which is not
true anymore.

Taking this into account I could imagine that this %ERROR:108: is also
outdated or changed in some way. Could this be possibly confirmed by
someone from NCC?

Piotr

-- 
gucio -> Piotr Strzyżewski
E-mail: Piotr.Strzyzewski at polsl.pl