Comment 4 for bug 1577108

On 05/01/2016 12:41 PM, mdavidsaver wrote:
> Is the SPC_ATTRIBUTE test necessary?

dbGet() has special code for fetching the values of record-type
attributes such as RTYP. Whether we actually need to use that code
(given that each attribute has an associated field descriptor) may be a
different question that would take some investigation to answer.

On examination of this code I see that attributes are a pin-hole in our
record locking scheme, given that they store a per-record-type value,
not per-record-instance. I think the assumption was that their values
would get set at startup and never changed afterwards, but we don't have
anything in the code to enforce that. I know that I-Tech use them in
their Libera IOCs but I don't know if they ever change their values at
runtime. However since the "field" address doesn't change even when you
change the value and they store a fixed-length string, I don't see this
as a big problem, at worst a client would get a mixture of old and new
string values.

- Andrew

--
Arguing for surveillance because you have nothing to hide is no
different than making the claim, "I don't care about freedom of
speech because I have nothing to say."
-- Edward Snowdon