Dear Berislav, Berislav Todorovic wrote:

On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, DB-News wrote:

...

...

The new version of the RIPE Database is now up and running! All objects have been automatically converted to RPSL and loaded into the new version of the Database.

Congratulations! However, I have a question:

When an attribute needs multiple lines to be described, the standard RPSL format requires the attribute name to be mentioned once, while successive lines are separted by spaces or commas (like you defined in the transition document as well). It used to be like that in the previous version of rpsl.ripe.net. However, right now, it seems to me there is a strange RIPE-181/RPSL mix in place. See example:

Indeed, we tried to introduce as little changes to objects look as possible, while staying RPSL compliant. In fact, RPSL defines members attribute as: Attribute Value Type as-set <object-name> mandatory, single-valued, class key members list of <as-numbers> or optional, multi-valued <as-set-names> which means that one can have multiple 'members:' attribute, each of them may have a list of members separated by commas. So, formally there is no RPSL syntax violation. You can update your object to make it look like in RADB, both examples are accepted and valid in the RIPE database. Regards, Andrei

* RADB and old REIMP.RIPE (standard RPSL):

[beri@nix00 ~]$ rwhois -h whois.ra.net as-kq as-set: AS-KQ descr: KPNQwest European routes Formerly AS-EUNET AND NOT AS-EUNETQWEST members: AS286, AS719, AS1136, AS1137, AS1213, AS1234, AS1889, AS1891, AS1902, AS2043, AS2049, AS2110, AS2135, AS2857, AS3220, ...

* RIPE (new format, RPSL):

as-set: AS-KQ descr: KPNQwest European routes descr: Formerly AS-EUNET AND NOT AS-EUNETQWEST members: AS286, AS719, AS1136, AS1137, AS1213, AS1234, AS1889 members: AS1891, AS1902, AS2043, AS2049, AS2110, AS2135, AS2857 members: AS3220, AS3246, AS3262, AS3265, AS3286, AS3324, AS3333 members: AS3347, AS3615, AS5385, AS5399, AS5403, AS5407, AS5419

While some of you might think this is not important, this is VERY important to some of us who make scripts for automating our tasks with the RIPE DB.

Can anyone explain the reason of this RPSL syntax violation? Thanks!

Regards, Beri

--------- Berislav Todorovic, Network Engineer --------- ------- KPNQwest N.V. - IP NOC (formerly EUnet NOC) ------- ---- Wilhelmina van Pruisenweg 78, 2595 AN Den Haag, NL ---- --- Phone: +31-70-379-3990; Mobile: +31-651-333-641 --- -- Email: beri@kpnqwest.net <=> beri@EU.net -- --- _ _ ____ _ .--. ____ ____ __/_ --- ----- /__/ /___/ /\ / / / | / /___/ /___ / ------ ------ _/ \_ / _/ \/ (__.\ |/\/ /___ ____/ (__. -----

-- Andrei Robachevsky DB Group Manager RIPE NCC