[db-wg] NWI reviews: NWI-6 Applicable data model not clear from contextless objects

Dear Denis, group,

On Wed, Oct 07, 2020 at 01:13:15PM +0000, ripedenis at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
> This is the last of the NWIs from 4 years ago
> https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/db-wg/2016-June/005272.html
> 
> For this one I am not even sure what is being asked for and I don't
> agree with some of the points in the problem statement. Maybe Job can
> expand on it.  Any comments appreciated...

 I recall correctly some people argued that adding or removing
attributes can potentially result in brittleness on the data consumer
side. A formal solution would be to mark each object with some kind of
'object schema version', and a reference to the applicable data model.
(Think DTD in XML context, or how things work in YANG).

In the abstract this idea sounds great, but I fear there are no takers
to do the heavy lifting of speccing it out, and updating the software
ecosystem to benefit from schema-awareness. Retrofitting modern day
insights into data model handling onto RPSL is perfectly achievable, but
a significant project in terms of time.

All in all recommending heavy RPSL consumers to subscribe to
db-wg at ripe.net, to read the release notes, and test against the RIPE
test environment seems a simpler solution.

I don't mind abandoning NWI-6.

Kind regards,

Job