Hello,
some time ago I created a new branch in GIT named 'daniel/xavp' that
includes code for a new pseudo-variable class 'xavp' - name being a
shortcut to 'extended attribute value pair'. I collected some design
details in wiki:
http://sip-router.org/wiki/devel/xavp
It is not a replacement for current AVP api implementation, although in
the future can replace it. In the past we had couple of discussions
about the limitations of avps which I tried to overcome. Here are some
highlights of xavp design:
- string names only - various tests showed that having the complex
addressing scheme with integer id and string name does not pay off
performance gains. XAVP computes and integer id for each name that is
used to speed up comparison
- possibility to store more data types - AVP allow string and integer
data types. More can be handled by XAVP, including a generic data type
where you can build your own structure and store it in the list. This is
good for example to store custom structures for transaction lifetine --
right now dialog module needs to store reference to dialog structure.
Optimizations can be done for any case of serial forking -- uri, dst
uri, q, etc can be stored in a structure without a need to parse and
build it from an encoded value stored in one or many avps
- possibility to group XAVPs inside another XAVP - practically is
building lists of XAVPs. This should overcome issues with naming
conflicts between modules - e.g., dispatacher module can group its avps
in a list named "dispatacher", lcr module in a list named 'lcrl, then
there can be XAVP with name 'uri' in both lists, without the risk of
misusage. Another benefit would be reducing the number of parameters,
right now each module exports a parameter to set the name for each AVP,
with xavp there is need for one parameter to set the name of the list,
then inside that list the module is free to use predefined names without
the risk of overlapping.
- xavp having value integer or string can be used directly in config,
whether they are in a sublist or not
Check the wiki (link above) for more. Looking forward for comments,
suggestions and improvements.
Cheers,
Daniel
--
Daniel-Constantin Mierla
* SIP Router Bootcamp
* Kamailio (OpenSER) and Asterisk Training
* Berlin, Germany, Sep 1-4, 2009
*
http://www.asipto.com/index.php/sip-router-bootcamp/