Shane Kerr wrote:
All,
On Wed, Apr 18, 2007 at 01:34:54PM +0200, Denis Walker wrote:
The worst problem that can occur is that someone will enter a reference to their person/role object just as we delete it. However, as we are only deleting unreferenced person/role objects, the time needed to re-create them is minimal. We suspect that a very large proportion of the unreferenced person/role objects that we will be deleting are abandoned objects that are no longer used.
A bit of thinking can come up with some scenerios that might be worse(*).
I definitely think any minor problems are more than outweighed by the removal of unused personal data!
-- Shane
(*) For example, a worse problem would be referencing the wrong person/role object. This can happen like so:
- Person object X created - Months pass... - Person object X deleted by this process - Person object Y created with same "nic-hdl:" as object X - User who created person object X decides to use it, but actually refers to object Y (since it has the same "nic-hdl:")
The user who created person object X assumes it is still fine, because the usual notification was not received, and in any case it was probably protected by "mnt-by:".
Of course, this is an unlikely corner case. :)
This case can already occur: - Person A creates object X without "mnt-by:" - Months pass... - Person B thinks he creates object Y with same "nic-hdl:" as object X - Person B actually modifies object X and changes it into object Y - Person A who created person object X decides to use it, but actually refers to object Y (since it has the same "nic-hdl:") Person A who created person object X assumes it is still fine, because he did not maintain his data and did not include a "notify:" attribute. This is also an unlikely corner case, but the first part does occasionally happen. denis