Can someone please provide an update regarding RIPE's RESTful APIs for manipulating the RIPE database?

The documentation points to http://lab.db.ripe.net/whois as the URL for communicating with the RIPE and TEST databases.  In my testing, transactions time out with that web service endpoint.  Using a slightly different URL (http://apps.db.ripe.net/whois), queries succeed but updates do not.

Could it be that the web service URL has changed?  Or is the e-mail template approach still preferred?

Thank you in advance...

Cheers,
Christopher Fuselier