[erlang-questions] Newbie Question: Module with DB Connection as a "global state"

[Michael Weibel - Amiado Group]

Hi all,

I'm new to erlang, new to this list and I hope here's the right place to ask this question.

I'm currently implementing a module for ejabberd where I need to log certain packets to a MySQL DB and I'm using the MySQL Native Driver for it. 

My current implementation is on github:
https://github.com/amiadogroup/mod_log_chat_mysql5/blob/master/src/mod_log_chat_mysql5.erl

In this file you see that I'm opening the MySQL Connection in the function "open_mysql_connection" and assign it to a ETS Table because I didn't find another way to store the DB Reference (I tried something with records but didn't succeed). 

This worked pretty well but I ran into the problem that after some days/weeks the ets table didn't have the DB Reference anymore. 
To prevent this, I want to create functions which setup the DB Connection again, if it doesn't have it anymore. 

As I'm trying to do this I run into the problem that the informations about how to connect to the db is only in the init-function available and I don't really want to store this information also in the ets table. 

Can anyone help me or point me to a site on how to do this?

Thanks,
Michael