BIND 10 #20: review Element class

[BIND 10 Development]

#20: review Element class
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 Reporter:  jelte                       |        Owner:  jelte                                                
     Type:  task                        |       Status:  assigned                                             
 Priority:  major                       |    Milestone:  01. Running, non-functional authoritative-only server
Component:  Inter-module communication  |   Resolution:                                                       
 Keywords:  ccapi                       |    Sensitive:  0                                                    
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Changes (by mgraff):

  * owner:  mgraff => jelte


Comment:

 I question the factory functions.  I know they are intended to make them
 exception-free by catching the memory allocation failure and returning an
 empty element, but I think this will cause problems.  If every method that
 calls this isn't careful it will send badly formatted messages in the case
 where memory allocation fails.  Isn't it just better to let the
 application deal with out of memory, perhaps at a higher, request-level
 event rather than having to validate the return of a factory?

 As a general comment, I think we need to re-visit if we need all the
 specific types for integer, decimal, etc.  I know C++ is strongly typed,
 but we can also specify data types and ranges in the messages we send
 (documentation good!) and check for those based on received format.  In
 other words, do we really need anything more than the basic 4 types:

   hash, array, number, string?

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Ticket URL: <http://bind10.isc.org/ticket/20#comment:6>
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