Who Manages Memory?

Generally, the stubs are responsible for packaging and unpackaging data, allocating and freeing memory, and transferring the data to and from memory. In some cases, however, the application is responsible for allocating and freeing memory. The following factors determine which component is responsible for memory management:

• Whether the pointer is a top-level ref parameter or whether the pointer is embedded within another structure.
• Directional attributes applied to the parameter.
• Pointer attributes applied to the parameter.
• Function return values.