[db-wg] Clean-up of unreferenced objects in the RIPE Database

Dear colleagues,

In compliance with data protection rules and the desire to maintain a “clean” database, we plan to remove unreferenced objects from the RIPE Database. We have recently been working on an improved implementation, and we are now ready to re-start the process.

In order to be eligible for deletion, objects must have no incoming references (or be a person-maintainer or role-maintainer pair) and must have had no incoming references from any aut-num, domain, inet(6)num, route(6), as-set, filter-set, inet-rtr, peering-set, route-set, rtr-set, as-block, key-cert or irt object during the last 90 days.

We have identified roughly 500,000 unreferenced objects in the RIPE Database and have prepared a script to remove these objects in several smaller batches. We will run the first batch to clean up roughly 3,600 role objects today at 16:00 CET. We plan to run an additional batch to clean up roughly 31,000 organisation objects tomorrow morning, and a final batch to clean up roughly 460,000 person objects on Thursday morning. After this, we will continue to run the process nightly to help keep the RIPE Database clean.

Further details about the cleanup process are available online:
https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/db/support/clean-up-of-unreferenced-data

Kind regards,

Tim Bruijnzeels
Assistant Manager Software Engineering
RIPE NCC Database Group