This is the extracted Arrow C data interfaces as documented in https://arrow.apache.org/docs/format/CDataInterface.html

It's not how you interact with the data in your own C++ code, it's for passing this data to other in-process consumers (libraries etc). While in the example it calls the release function, this is usually just passed to a downstream consumer and it's their responsibility to call it.

I agree that having such an example as the first one is confusing. Given that a large part of the point of Apache Arrow is passing data columnar data between libraries in different languages in memory, it makes some sense.

It's not how you interact with the data in your own C++ code, it's for passing this data to other in-process consumers (libraries etc). While in the example it calls the release function, this is usually just passed to a downstream consumer and it's their responsibility to call it.

This seems like a strange rationalizations when you don't need to have explicit release to be able to pass it to something else.