=At 02:46 PM 4/08/97 -0400, you wrote: =>At the last ripe meeting it was agreed to track object history =>including UTC time zone, although I'm not entirely clear what this =>means. Presumebly it means that the changed field will be stamped =>automatically by the db software with utc time and the from =>line of the email. = =That would certainly sort it out. The RIPE-DB WG proposed to have the db update mechanism *automatically* tag objects being updated with a UTC timestamp (and some other data). This data would *not* be under the control of the submitting entity. It is not meant to replace or modify any data in the changed: field as supplied by the submitting entity. This change is already on the RIPE-NCC's to-do-list for implementation. => I think another holdup is the issue of the millenium approaching. =>The current date format (ie, YYMMDD) will be insufficient for those =>future dates. And so this problem must be fixed too. => I would think that YYYYMMDD is an obvious solution. The RIPE DB production software already accepts objects with the extended 8 character format. =That will take care of the y2k problem, but won't help those of us in =unusual time zones... For that we would need something like YYYYMMDDHHMMZZZ =(ZZZ=time zone). This is a bit more of a mouthful, of course. I think local time details (time zones, DST, whatever) should become a non-issue as soon as we get the changed: data decoupled from the UTC time stamps as applied by the db update process? =>The db software =>will be converted from ripe181 to rpsl over the coming 6 months. =>Maybe when the db's are officially changed to rpsl we can update =>the objects from YYMMDD --> YYYYMMDD format. => =>ps Yes, this is exactly the correct forum to bring this up. = =Good :) Although I wonder whether it would be useful and more consistent to convert all the exiting objects from the 6 character to the 8 character format and to expand the 6 character format on the fly during the update processing... Wilfried. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilfried Woeber : e-mail: Woeber@CC.UniVie.ac.at Computer Center - ACOnet : Vienna University : Tel: +43 1 4065822 355 Universitaetsstrasse 7 : Fax: +43 1 4065822 170 A-1010 Vienna, Austria, Europe : NIC: WW144 --------------------------------------------------------------------------