[db-wg] Proposal to allow UTF8

Hi WG,


> On 17 Apr 2015, at 12:18, Piotr Strzyzewski <Piotr.Strzyzewski at polsl.pl> wrote:
> 
> Dear DB-WG Members
> 
> Proposal:
> 
> I propose to allow UTF8 in all free text attributes of all DB objects
> except in primary keys.
> 
> Description:
> 
> RIPE NCC service region covers Europe, the Middle East and parts of
> Central Asia. Moreover we have users from outside of this region. This
> means that WHOIS DB stores data for people and organizations from number
> of different countries using number of different alphabets.
> 
> At this moment, all data in the RIPE WHOIS DB have to be stored using
> 7-bit plain US ASCII character set.
> 
> [As a side note: It is technically possible to store some UTF8 content
> in some attributes, but the answer to whois query (both terminal and web
> based) returns "?" character in this case.]

Technically it's Latin-1 at the moment, so it's a bit more than US ASCII, but does not include e.g. cyrillic.

> 
> Lack of the full support for national character sets leads to some
> problems which includes, but is not limited to:
> 
> 1. Mistakes in person/organization names due to national->english and
> english->national (based mostly on guess) conversion.
> 2. Mistakes in person/organization address due to national->english and
> english->national (based mostly on guess) conversion.
> 3. Conflict of converted words with other correct words (most visible in
> latin-based character sets).
> 4. Possible offensive word formation due to national->english
> conversion of names and/or addresses of person/organization.
> 
> [As a side note to points no 1-3: This could lead to some problems when
> LEA tries to find out precisely who should be contacted in case of
> abuse.]
> 
> On the other side, community members needs to know who is responsible
> for certain resource without the necessity of understanding all the
> others character sets. Moreover, some objects are filled with data that
> has to be provided in ASCII character set due to business rules (like
> ORGANISATION object details for LIRs). RIPE NCC has a policy to insist
> on latin based names for organisation objects that it verifies
> (allocated, and sponsored end-user space).
> 
> Taking this into accout I propose to allow UTF8 in all free text
> attributes of all DB objects except in primary keys.
> 
> Some possible issues to be addressed:
> 
> 1. When this proposal will be supported by the DB-WG, then it has to be
> discussed at least with AA-WG and AP-WG.

> 
> Lack of the full support for national character sets leads to some
> problems which includes, but is not limited to:
> 
> 1. Mistakes in person/organization names due to national->english and
> english->national (based mostly on guess) conversion.
> 2. Mistakes in person/organization address due to national->english and
> english->national (based mostly on guess) conversion.
> 3. Conflict of converted words with other correct words (most visible in
> latin-based character sets).
> 4. Possible offensive word formation due to national->english
> conversion of names and/or addresses of person/organization.
> 
> [As a side note to points no 1-3: This could lead to some problems when
> LEA tries to find out precisely who should be contacted in case of
> abuse.]
> 
> On the other side, community members needs to know who is responsible
> for certain resource without the necessity of understanding all the
> others character sets. Moreover, some objects are filled with data that
> has to be provided in ASCII character set due to business rules (like
> ORGANISATION object details for LIRs). RIPE NCC has a policy to insist
> on latin based names for organisation objects that it verifies
> (allocated, and sponsored end-user space).
> 
> Taking this into accout I propose to allow UTF8 in all free text
> attributes of all DB objects except in primary keys.
> 
> Some possible issues to be addressed:
> 
> 1. When this proposal will be supported by the DB-WG, then it has to be
> discussed at least with AA-WG and AP-WG.

Yes, also from RIPE NCC's perspective it's important that this is done before any final technical decision is made here.


> 2. UTF8 may cause problems for client code.
> 
> Comment: The proper implementation plan and announcements schedule
> should be prepared.

Ack. We will probably get a number of support requests because of this, but provided that we have a clear mandate from the community (including AA-WG and AP-WG), we can address this with an implementation plan, announcements and RC. 

> 
> 3. UTF8 may result in contact addresses and names that are not readable
> by a large part of the community.

This is why the AA-WG and AP-WG should be in the loop. The main concern is what users expect from the content of the registry with regards to abuse or contact related information for resources.

Arguments can be made for both cases (accurate representation of names vs a representation that is more easily recognisable by most users). As far as we are concerned we are impartial in this, but need a clear community mandate on the way forward.

> Comment: Primary keys (mostly names) still have to be in ASCII character
> set. Moreover, LIRs data are also in ASCII character set due to business
> rules.

At least with regards to resources allocated or assigned through the RIPE NCC (possibly through a sponsoring LIR) our current interpretation of related policies is that latin-1 is expected. I.e. people can deal with some variations on basic ascii, but nothing too exotic. Another concern is that it is not feasible for us to accurately verify names in all possible non-latin character sets, and of course it's very important to our function as a registry that this is done properly.

That said we can also apply this to the specific information that is verified by the RIPE NCC, such as names and addresses for organisations, even if the database technically allows UTF-8 in other places: e.g. person names or names for organisations not associated with resources that the RIPE NCC allocated or assigned.


> 4. At this moment there are no major technical issues blocking UTF8
> support in the RIPE DB back-end. However thorough checks have to be
> done.

Agreed. There is no technical showstopper from our perspective.

Kind regards,

Tim Bruijnzeels

Assistant Manager Software Engineering
RIPE NCC

> 
> Looking for your comments.
> 
> Piotr
> 
> -- 
> gucio -> Piotr Strzyżewski
> E-mail: Piotr.Strzyzewski at polsl.pl
>