Hi Daniel,

I think it would be more productive to have a nicer tone towards the NCC staff. They are not trying to ignore standards. I would assume that they just set it to 80 because almost no addresses would exceed that and it might make the database a bit smaller.

If you think it's an issue that there is a limit of 80 characters then you can propose a change to the db-wg.

Personally I think it does make a big difference whether or not it's an actual issue or just a theoretical one in a case like this.

-Cynthia

On Thu, 5 Sept 2024, 16:42 Daniel Suchy via db-wg, <db-wg@ripe.net> wrote:

Hello,
I simply think it's bad approach to *ignore* internet standards (RFCs)
and implement your own (nonstandard) rules.

If current database schema doesn't follow standards and as result you
have some "generic" errors, you should fix DB schema.

I don't think WG should micromanage NCC in similar "obvious" thinks.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel here.

Or the NCC staff wants to tell us that RFCs are a waste of paper?

What real problem solves your limit of email in the RIPE database to 80
characters? Why it isn't simply set 64+255+1 (as expected by RFC 5321
for valid email address)?

It doesn't matter if it causes any real problems. But it can cause them,
unexpectly. Statistics are not important here. It's not your role to
judge email validity in term of it's length. You have to check its
syntax validity. Developers like to introduce their own special rules,
but they have no support in the RFC - and that is simply a bug.

- Daniel

On 9/5/24 4:24 PM, Edward Shryane wrote:
> We now limit the email address to 80 characters to fit into the database index table, which fixed a bug. Previously, if a user submitted a too-long email address, it would fail with a generic "internal error" because the SQL INSERT statement failed. Now, the update will fail with a syntax error on the email address.
>
>> I don't think implementing limitations adnd ignoring relevant RFCs here isn't a good approach at all, it can generate unnecessary problems.
> Does the 80 character limit cause any problems? We fixed a bug for an issue that occurred once, for an address which seemed to be auto-generated. The average length of all email addresses currently in the RIPE database is 21 characters.
>
> If the current limit is too restrictive for the DB-WG then we will increase it to the limit defined in the RFC.
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