Subject: RE: [ietf-provreg] Comments: draft-sullivan-epp-experience

From: "Hollenbeck, Scott" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:24:08 -0400

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Andrew Sullivan
> Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 10:58 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [ietf-provreg] Comments: draft-sullivan-epp-experience

[snip]

> The "linked" status doesn't strictly prohibit deletion itself;
> instead, 3732 has this: "A host name object MUST NOT be deleted if
> the host object is associated with any other object."  Similarly, 3733
> has this: "A contact object SHOULD NOT be deleted if it is associated
> with other known objects."  I can see an argument for preserving the
> latter; but the former is surely a policy decision, and ought to be
> left to the repository operator.
> 
> I realise that this proposal may be more controversial than the one
> to unhook the prohibitiond from the "pending" states.  But even
> though this is expressing a policy that is a good idea -- don't allow
> deletions of an object if anything else refers to it -- it's still a
> policy, and therefore something that a repository operator might want
> to change in some circumstance we haven't imagined yet.  Since the
> prohibitions are already possible using some other status, there's no
> reason to use this status to enforce the prohibitions.  (I think the
> linked status is worth keeping, because one might use it as the basis
> of policy.)

While I agree that this isn't a protocol interoperability issue,
remember why the text is there: deleting a host object (or a domain
object that has subordinate host objects) has the potential to *BREAK*
DNS resolution.  Some poor operator that's not a party to the
registry-registrar relationship doesn't find out about such changes
until something disappears from a zone and things stop working.

I'm not averse to softening the MUST NOT to a SHOULD NOT as long as we
explain that things can really break if it's done without consideration
of object relationships.

-Scott-

---

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 12:01:45 -0400

> explain that things can really break if it's done without consideration

Yes, that's what I had in mind.  I totally agree that this is a
dangerous area to wade.

FWIW, the operational issue that has this on my mind is the lousy set
of alternatives one now has to choose among for cases where one
registrar wants to delete a domain, and another registrar is pointing
to a subordinate host of that domain as a name server.  It's not a
big deal if there's only one such pointer, but if there are dozens,
it's at least ugly.  I'm hoping someone smarter than I am will come
up with something brilliant to make this co-ordination easier, and if
we weaken the language here a little, then it will be possible to
accommodate such schemes without modifying or violating the protocol. 
(That isn't to say that I'd advocate allowing such deletions starting
tomorrow; it'd be only in case of some clever scheme for solving the
problems.)

A

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