From RFC2725 (maybe this is not part of RPSL ?):

================================================================== 9.6 Other Objects Many of the RPSL ancillary objects have no natural hierarchy the way AS numbers, Internet addresses and routes do have a numeric hierarchy. Some examples are "maintainers", "people" and "role" objects. For these objects, lack of any hierarchy leads to two problems. 1. There is no hierarchy that can be exploited to direct queries to alternate registries. At some point the query strategy of searching all known registries becomes impractical. 2. There is no hierarchy on which authorizations of additions can be based. The first problem can be addressed by considering the name space for each of the ancillary objects to be unique only within the local database and to use explicit references to an external repository where needed. To specify an external repository reference, the object key is preceded by the name of the repository and the delimiter "::". For example a NIC handle may take the form "RIPE::CO19". Currently there is a desire to keep NIC handles unique so the naming convention of appending a dash and the repository name is used. Prepending the repository name provides the unique name space since an object in the RIPE database referencing "CO19" would be interpreted as "RIPE::CO19" by default, but it would still be possible to query or reference "IANA::CO19". There is no possibility of accidentally forgetting to adhere to the conventions when making an addition and the existing objects are accommodated, including cases where name conflicts have already occurred. ================================================================== There is a need to address the "external repository reference" problem for a long time. It is in the RFC already and just no implementation to support the solution yet. Now I think is the time to take this issue seriously (at least for "import:" and "export:" :) Best Regards. Ping Lu Cable & Wireless USA Network Tools and Analysis Group W: +1-703-292-2359 E: plu@cw.net

-----Original Message----- From: Mark Prior [mailto:mrp@mrp.net] Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2002 6:38 AM To: Lu, Ping; 'Nigel Titley'; db-wg@ripe.net Subject: RE: Final Minutes for DB WG at RIPE 41

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Hi, Nigel,

About {AP-41.8 C&W]

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[AP-41.2 C&W] To send their proposal to allow referencing external objects in the DB to the mailing list for discussion. Ongoing, no action yet We made a proposal to allow "import: from SRC::ASN:AS-SET" for using data from other source of registry data. I haven't seen any

At 2:33 PM -0400 19/7/02, Lu, Ping wrote: formal response from

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RIPE NCC yet. This shouldn't affect the database referential integrity but will make RR closer to a distributed structure. Maybe the status is now "Complete, pending response from RIPE NCC" ? Agreed ?

That would require a change to the RPSL standard and I haven't seen any internet drafts suggesting such a change.

Mark.