[Mimedefang] MySQL connection per slave

[David F. Skoll]

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Chris Masters wrote:

> Now this does not address error conditions such as
> disconnecting if the slave dies (make sure that
> connections don't remain open) or how to re-connect if
> the connection is lost during the slave lifecycle.

Our CanIt product works something like this:

undef $PersistentDatabaseConnection;

sub get_db_connection () {
    if (defined($PersistentDatabaseConnection)) {
	if (simple_query_succeeds($PersistentDatabaseConnection)) {
	    return $PersistentDatabaseConnection;
        }
	undef $PersistentDatabaseConnection;
    }
    $PersistentDatabaseConnection = connect_to_database();
    return $PersistentDatabaseConnection;
}

Whenever we need the connection handle, we call get_db_connection().
This lazily maintains a per-slave connection.  We also run a simple
query ("SELECT 1") on the connection to make sure it's alive before
returning it.  You need to trade off how long you keep the connection
in a local variable vs. calling the function, because each function
call runs the simple query.

This doesn't require any changes to mimedefang.pl or any special
initialization function.

--
David.