Dear Carsten, Yes indeed, the consistency problems in the RIPE database are well known and are even well documented in: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/dbase/info/consistency* and ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m26-orange-dbcons.ps.gz or http://www.ripe.net/meetings/ripe/ripe-26/pres/db-consist/ Our plans to deal with them are also documented in: ftp://ftp.ripe.net/ripe/presentations/ripe-m27-orange-woeber-dbcons.ps.gz or http://www.ripe.net/meetings/ripe/ripe-27/pres/db/consistency/ We do plan to try to eliminate multiple objects pointing to the same person, as well as other clean ups of the person data. [As a side note, this project is now well underway.] We have not however discussed limiting the ability to enter data in the RIPE database, outside of the current and proposed authorization mechanisms. That would certainly be a significant change of course, and for that reason, I have cc'd the RIPE Database working group on this mail to get their feedback on this idea. Greetings, Carol Orange RIPE NCC In message <3456024C.70C28953@contrib.com>, Carsten Schiefner writes:
As a result of a voluminous discussion with one of POPs I would like to point your interest on the following topic I am a little bit upset of:
Almost everybody who knows about about the RIPE database schema (which is no secret at all!) can do entries just by sending a mail to 'auto-dbm@ripe.net'. This leads to an overwhelming bunch of multiple, bad maintained or what-ever-you-want entries - especially person objects - without any fun in grepping through them and selecting the right one to create a new object. Example:
There are four(!) entries for the entity "Joerg Schmidt" of "ZWF Digitale Informations Technologie GmbH": JS893-RIPE, JS1161-RIPE, JS1163-RIPE and JS1438-RIPE. This should be definitely stopped!
My idea is that we should discuss future restrictions on the possibility for everybody to put entries in the RIPE database, maybe by setting up and maintaing access lists for every LIR.
For me this database is a central tool in my daily work and I am very interested in keeping quality and reliability of stored data as high as possible.
Kind regards,
Carsten Schiefner --
Carsten Schiefner mailto:schiefner@contrib.com TCP/IP GmbH, Berlin (Germany) - Contrib.Net http://www.contrib.com Phone: +49.30.44 33 66-0 Fax: +49.30.44 33 66-15 ======================================================================