[omniORB] Object life time

[Jerome.Kerdreux at finix.eu.org]

In my current application (which is my first serious corba code), the servant 
have a couple of objects (mainly devices and services). So i wrote too 
class Device_i and Service_i. But in fact during the long running process
devices can go on or new device can arrive. 

So to avoid the need to recreate a lot of Device_i at each client request, i 
maintain a list of already available Device_i in the servant. 

This could sound strange but i don't want to create a lot of Device_i since 
they are never release (free memory) in the servant ? (perhaps i'm wrong 
w/ that) 


The previous code was something like this:
----------------------------------------------------------
class Device_i( MyName__POA.Device) :
     .....
	def __init__(self, device):
           self._device = device 

class ControlPoint_i(MyName__POA.ControlPoint):
     .... 
     def getDevices(self):
         r = [] 
         for device in globalDevList:
              r.append( Device_i ( dev) )
	return [ o._this() for o in r] 
-----------------------------------------------------------

As you can see this create a bounch of Device_i .. and 
- creation is long 
- eat some memory ? 
- what to do is the device isn't available anymore because it 
  will be a valid corba object 


So i decide to do something like this:

------------------------------------------------------------
class CtrlPoint_i(MyName__POA.ControlPoint):

    def __init__(self,ctrlPoint):
        self._devices = []

   def getDevices(self):
        result = []
        real = copy.copy(globalDevList)

        # cleaning the device list if need
        for dev in self._devices:
            if dev._device not in  real:
                self._devices.remove(dev)
            else:
                real.remove(dev._device)

	# add new device if needed
        for dev in real:
            self._devices.append(  Device_i( dev ) )
        return [o._this() for o in self._devices]
------------------------------------------------------------

As you imagine, now if a client request the devices 
it will get the previous Device_i () if they are again 
valid (still in the globalDevList) and new one if needed.


So my question is : 
Is this a common way to do this or i'm going in the wrong way ? 
Should i "cache" the previous objectref too ? (._this() ) and if so
how could i find the Device_i instance corresponding for a given
object ref  ? 




Many thanks for any suggestion.



PS: For my job i need to write a howto use OmniORB and OpenORB 
( java ), perhaps some of you may be interested by this

PS: Apologize for my awfull english and many thanks to Duncan for 
      his previous anser