Dear working group,
If an object is submitted without any changes it will always result in an update, because when we compare the object the "last-modified:" value will typically not match.(unless the update is done at sub-second speed) In other words what should be a "no-op" now results in a "touch" operation where only the "last-modified:" attribute is changed.
Just an observation. This might actually be a useful side effect. It allows maintainers of objects to 'touch' their objects and show they are alive and actively maintaining their data even when nothing needs to change. I am sure some people in the community who are going to start monitoring "last-changed:" attributes to argue that data is out of date would appreciate that, or even request it.
Sure, there is something to be said for this, but the downside of this is that the version history of the object becomes very large, which may not be desired.
As far as I know this was not explicitly specified beforehand, so it would be good to have a clear WG consensus call on this now.
For the moment we feel that it's probably best to apply the planned 'fix' because the behaviour will then be consistent with no-ops until now, but we can always revert this change when we get a clear direction from the WG.
Kind regards,
Tim Bruijnzeels
Assistant Manager Software Engineering
RIPE NCC