Dear all, regarding the discussion of a "NOC" object:
Message-Id: <9603081902.AA08048@ncc.ripe.net> Subject: Re: draft minutes, DB-WG meeting, RIPE-23, Jan.96, Amsterdam To: woeber@cc.univie.ac.at (Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet) Date: Fri, 8 Mar 1996 19:01:44 +0000 (GMT) Cc: db-wg@ripe.net, woeber@cc.univie.ac.at, ncc@ripe.net From: Michael Behringer <M.H.Behringer@dante.org.uk>
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The Role: or NOC: object needs more thought and detailed definition. There is still some uncertainty whether a full-blown new object (with a handle) is really needed, or whether the person object can be extended. [...]
From my perspective: I do not really *need* the role object. If this object will not be implemented, we will find some sort of a workaround by using comments in a person object. Then we would define a person "XY-NOC" for example, address and such is obvious, and the additional information we need will be put into the comment fields, using our own sub-definition, ie, we would put essentially the same thing I proposed into the comments, and only the parser would need to be different. Not nice - but it does the job.
The reason why I am pursuing this here though is that I think that the role object is really missing in the DB. And I get back to the same old example: When someone is leaving a company, and the route/AS/other objects containing this person are not updated, it looks like the AS/route/other is maintained by someone from a different organisation. And you have to make changes in all objects that refer to this person.
From my daily experience I can only follow Michael - a NOC-object (or similar) would be extremely handy. I have some overview of data regarding contacts from our networks: we generate an internal mailing list from the contact information and see pretty well from the "undeliveries" how many are valid. The weekly rate of changes is around 1-2%. These changes are * Some of the persons just change their mail addresses but stay with their organization. Most of these can be handled because we urge people to use mail addresses like "user@organization.country", excluding hosts, if they insist on using personal mail addresses * Most of the invalid addresses are caused by people leaving their organi- zation. We urge organizations to use local mail fanouts like "group@org.cy" (we handle these locally and not via the RIPE database) instead of personal mail addresses. These are normally reachable but we do not know if the persons are still valid contacts - however, we DO have a valid contact mail address. * Very difficult to handle are persons who insist on using a personal mail address. Quite often we find that they take a new job in another organi- zation but keep their original account and mail address (sometimes for years) I estimate that the contact information is not uptodate for at least 10% of the networks. Most of the changes we do on the RIPE database is updating person information. Therefore, I think it is a very good idea to have a Role or NOC object. This does not mean that person objects are less important than before. But having this new object makes the data more consistent and uptodate. I also think that the implementation is not overly difficult - the Role or NOC object shares many components with the maintainer object. Regards Joachim Schmitz _____________________________________________________________________________ For any problem reports regarding DFN-IP, please send your e-mail to >>>>>> noc@noc.dfn.de <<<<<< DFN Network Operation Center Rechenzentrum Universitaet Stuttgart, Allmandring 30, D-70550 Stuttgart Phone: 0711-685-5810, 0711-685-5576, FAX +711 6787626 (business hours) EMERGENCY phone +711 1319 139 with answering machine and pager more info: finger help@noc.dfn.de _____________________________________________________________________________