[Apologies for duplicate emails] Dear Colleagues, The Data Protection Task Force asked the RIPE NCC to enforce maintaining all data in the RIPE Database. Currently, the "mnt-by:" attribute is optional in PERSON and ROLE objects. The RIPE NCC has now made this attribute mandatory in both these object types in a test environment. We recommend that anyone who uses automated scripts to generate or modify these objects should test their procedures and scripts against the test facilities. The test server has a recent copy of the RIPE Database data. One significant effect of this change is the circular dependency between PERSON and MNTNER objects. For a new user with no data in the RIPE Database, these two objects must be created together. This cannot be done by the normal update methods. There is a new user start-up interface that creates this pair of objects: https://www.db.ripe.net/cgi-bin/new-user-startup.pl This start-up process is described in the new RIPE Database Update Reference Manual: http://www.ripe.net/db/docs.html The test service is available on a test server at the following URL: whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net Queries to this database instance can be directed to: whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net:43 Email updates can be sent to<auto-dbm-mandatory-mntby@ripe.net>. Synchronous updates are available at: https://syncupdates-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net/ Near Real-Time Mirror (NRTM) access is available at: whois-mandatory-mntby.db.ripe.net:4444 Regards Denis Walker Business Analyst RIPE NCC Database Group