[OpenSER-Devel] RFC: memory management in database modules

[Henning Westerholt]

Hi,

i've a question about the 'correct' way to do the memory management for 
results in the database modules. 

At the moment there existing two different styles:

mysql, unixodbc don't allocate new memory and just assign the string pointer 
of the result set to the internal OpenSER representation. The modules that 
needs to use this results needs to copy them, because there are not available 
after a call to the DB specific result free function.

postgres, db_berkeley allocate new memory and copy all string values from the 
database to the internal representation. Modules that uses this driver don't 
need to copy there values, even after the freeing of the result set. 

As mysql is the most used database, (i assume) that every module copy the 
values from the result set after the query execution. This is unnecessary for 
the postgres DB, and further prevents me from using only one memory 
management function for the internal representation of the DB structures.

As we have many more modules than database connectors in the code, i think it 
would make more sense to change the postgres and db_berkeley module to match 
the behaviour of the mysql module.

Any comments? 

Henning