From db-wg-admin@ripe.net Fri Sep 12 11:15:10 2003

Dear all,

Regarding the SUCCESS reply it was a decision that we made when we re-structured dbupdate that we only reported FAILUE if we detected an error. If there is no error we report SUCCESS. This means that SUCCESS is now returned for a blank update message, a message where none of the objects are recognised (as in your case) and when no operation is performed because the submitted object is identical to the one currently in the database.

It would not be difficult to change this behaviour if it is generally felt that the current scheme is mis-leading. Perhaps we can have some opinions about this from other users on the db-wg mailing list.

As input for the WG, here is the relevant part of the private mail I sent to Niall: ----- Begin Included Message ----- My understanding is that the parser did not find any object, i.e. any task to be performed, therefore it did not flag any error, so the whole mail was processed with "sucess"... I admit this is definitely misleading, so it may be useful to treat this as a special case (i.e. the case of an empty mail that has a warning). [In case you submit several objects or tasks, one of which at least is correct and you also have ignored objects due to wrong syntax, the result SUCCESS is less misleading in my view, as at least the correct task was performed with success...] ----- End Included Message ----- In other words, do not flag with SUCCESS an empty message. I recommend to flag it with something like UNKNOWN. Janos