Dear colleagues,

The recent RIPE Database software rewrite has enabled us to offer new and valuable functionality to the community with minimal effort. One of these features is the Object Tags functionality, initially introduced by Kaveh Ranjbar at RIPE 66 and since then communicated to the community and the Database Working Group Chairs. We are now happy to announce that the Object Tags feature is fully deployed.

Object Tags is publicly visible metadata related to an object in the RIPE Database. The tags do not appear by default and users can enable them by supplying the --show-tag-info option. The tags will appear in the comment section and it does not change the default behaviour of your queries.

The main goal of the tags is to improve the data quality in the RIPE Database by, for example, better notifying users of potential issues with an object. As a secondary benefit, query results can now be filtered based on tags, making it easier for users to find exactly what they need.

The RIPE NCC will maintain a list of the available tags on a webpage referenced in the Help section and in related documentation.

Currently, there are two types of tags:

- Objects due to be deleted by the automated clean-up are tagged:
Unreferenced # will be deleted in n days

- All RIPE and GRS resource data is tagged with either:
{SOURCE}-REGISTRY-RESOURCE or {SOURCE}-USER-RESOURCE

For more information and examples of how the new feature can be used, I'd like to refer you to Kaveh's RIPE Labs article at:
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/kranjbar/ripe-database-object-tags

We hope that you can come up with creative ways of using this functionality. We are eager to hear how you use this feature and what we can do to make it better.

I would also like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as not everyone here knows who I am. My name is Johan Åhlén and I'm the new Assistant Database Team Manager at the RIPE NCC. I'm taking over Kaveh's role of managing the Database Team as Kaveh has accepted the new position of Head of Science Division. Before managing the Database Team, I worked as a Senior Software Engineer in the Business Applications Department where I was involved in the development of both internal and external RIPE NCC applications. I look forward to working with you all.

Kind regards,

Johan Åhlén
Assistant Database Team Manager
RIPE NCC