Re: Object Metadata Proposal
From owner-db-wg@ripe.net Thu Nov 8 17:53:37 2001 From: Andrei Robachevsky <andrei@ripe.net>
Dear Andrei, I think both proposals (this one and the garbage collection) are very good and very useful. I just have a further suggestion and a question (I apologize if this has already been discussed).
Metadata Contents ------------------
Other meta-attributes may be added as needed.
My suggestion would be to add a meta-attribute "creation-time:" which would store the date and time the object was created (as opposed to "update-time:", which only shows when it was last updated). This attribute would never change. The rationale behind having this attribute is that one would have a proof of the existence of the object in the database from (at least) creation-date (until at least query time). This may help for example auditing LIR assignments to the same end-user (which is limited to one AW worth in any 12 months). My question would be about the generation of the initial values (of update-time and ref-time) for the _existing_ objects. One aproach would be to use the "changed:" value for "update-time", and for "ref-time" the most recent "changed" value of the objects referencing the given object. The only problem is that we know "changed" is not (very) reliable. An other approach would be to use the time of the (initial) creation of the meta-attributes as initial value both for "update-time" and "ref-time". This is probably misleading. A better approach would probably be to leave these values empty, but this would not meet the current spec. The most exact approach would be to retrieve the exact values from the update logs, but this is probably too expensive. My question is which approach do you plan to take (one of the above or one I did not think about)? Thanks and regards, Janos
Dear Janos, Janos Zsako wrote:
I just have a further suggestion and a question (I apologize if this has already been discussed).
Metadata Contents ------------------
Other meta-attributes may be added as needed.
My suggestion would be to add a meta-attribute "creation-time:" which would store the date and time the object was created (as opposed to "update-time:", which only shows when it was last updated). This attribute would never change.
The rationale behind having this attribute is that one would have a proof of the existence of the object in the database from (at least) creation-date (until at least query time).
This may help for example auditing LIR assignments to the same end-user (which is limited to one AW worth in any 12 months).
This may provide some useful indicators for auditing, but cannot be considered as data that auditing (or other similar procedures) depends on. After implementing this proposal 99.9% of the database objects will have no creation-time, nor update-time. Which shouldn't result in treating them differently from objects that have such metadata set. But I agree that having such meta-attribute improves situation in the long run.
My question would be about the generation of the initial values (of update-time and ref-time) for the _existing_ objects.
One aproach would be to use the "changed:" value for "update-time", and for "ref-time" the most recent "changed" value of the objects referencing the given object. The only problem is that we know "changed" is not (very) reliable.
An other approach would be to use the time of the (initial) creation of the meta-attributes as initial value both for "update-time" and "ref-time". This is probably misleading. A better approach would probably be to leave these values empty, but this would not meet the current spec.
Current spec is a very early draft, and it allows empty value for example for "expire-time:". Or we may display "never", "n/a", etc. in such case.
The most exact approach would be to retrieve the exact values from the update logs, but this is probably too expensive.
Agree.
My question is which approach do you plan to take (one of the above or one I did not think about)?
Thanks and regards, Janos
Thanks, -- Andrei Robachevsky RIPE NCC
participants (2)
-
Andrei Robachevsky -
Janos Zsako