We were making a copy of the fifo name and stripping any domain name,
but then not using the value.

Reduce number of local variables where possible; consolidate lines.

This marker value is only used in one place.

If getting the DB handle failed during the load or reload of the
configuration, we would leak the XML structure we just allocated for
the configuration.

The goal here is to describe theory.  We want to illuminate what the
code is trying to do and what the core concepts are.