RE: EPICS r3.13 field DESC length

[Jeff Hill <johill@lanl.gov>]

> Finally, I can't help following Andy's lead and asking why there is no
> record field that indicates the record type. I believe that this could
> often be useful. What about RTYP?

We should not immediately assume that adding a field name to the database that allows
clients to query the record type will automatically  increase the per record memory 
consumption cost. Since this information is known to dbCommon, and does not need
to be stored in the record we could have a field name that has no associated storage
(or at least not per-record instance storage).

Still, a better way to solve this problem might be to add a new CA data type to db_access.h
which allows the record type to be queried as a PV attribute (a string data type
since the list of all record types isn't known at compile time).

Jeff