Dear Tom, On Wed, Jul 1, 2020, at 16:16, Tom Hill via db-wg wrote: > Unless of course, parsing/filtering before insertion (thus augmenting > the database's table natural design restrictions) is not something Good > To Do. Database design definitely isn't my primary skill. > > Saying that, I have long been idly frustrated by the way that mntners > seemingly have a reversible, unwritten standard of 'MNT-[random]' or > '[random]-MNT'. I can't be the only one.
It is possible to change this, but it'll take some time: extensive research to figure out a path which causes the least disruption to the fewest amount of people. Ideally only a handful of people have to change their "mntner:" primary key. I think a mandatory "-MNT" or "MNT-" or "-MAINT" is helpful because the maintainers primary key string does pop up from time to time without any context, and this can lead to confusion. See https://seclists.org/nanog/2020/Jan/650 for a fun story about how one person's email error code is another person's BGP autonomous system reference. :-) It starts with a volunteer who does some digging in the data to see if a migration path can be constructed or not. A conclusion may be that it is too hard, but we don't know yet. Are you up for it? :) Kind regards, Job
