Dear colleagues, We are happy to announce the deployment of RIPE Database software release 1.80 to the Release Candidate (RC) environment. This release contains quite significant changes to long-standing RIPE Database functionality. This is why we urge you to thoroughly test your tools and scripts against the RC environment to make sure nothing in your workflow breaks: https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/db/release-notes/rc-release-candidate-enviro... 1. This release continues to gradually phase out the "changed" attribute. We're now in phase 2, where the attribute is marked as optional. For details on this functionality change, please refer to the implementation plan: https://labs.ripe.net/Members/tim/deprecating-the-changed-attribute-in-the-r... 2. Also according to plan, the "referral-by" attribute has now been completely removed. It is no longer mandatory when creating or updating maintainers. We will perform a data cleanup following the release, to remove this attribute from current maintainer objects. Documentation for this release is published here: https://www.ripe.net/data-tools/support/documentation/ripe-database-document... Please contact us if you find any issues with this release, or in case you have any questions or comments. We plan to deploy this release to the production environment on Monday, 13 July. Kind regards, Alex Band Product Manager (standing in for Tim, who is enjoying being a proud father)