Re: [boost] Interest in Database Template Library?

From: Corwin Joy (cjoy_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-06-04 15:40:09

----- Original Message -----
From: "md656" <md656_at_[hidden]>
To: <boost_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: [boost] Interest in Database Template Library?

> Another last question. Can you compare your DTL to MS OLE DB?
>
> Mohammed

Well, I won't claim to be a big expert on MS OLEDB but the main selling
point that Microsoft put forward for OLEDB was two things:
1. Provides a query engine that you can glue onto non database type
applications, so that if you are developing, e.g. a mail system, you can use
OLEDB to provide a query like interface for querying, say, what mail has be
recieved.

2. Provides a more objected oriented type view on what data lies in a system
including a bit more heirarchy information and possibly more information
about data relations.

So, then here is my 2 cents on this:

I never found selling point 1 all that great.  OLEDB is kind of a mess to
hook up to from a programming point of view.  Enough so, that the easiest
way is often to just buy an ODBC driver toolkit (such as OpenAccess /
OpenRDA - http://www.atinet.com/Products/Products.asp) which will typically
provide the query engine for you and give you an OLEDB interface as well, if
you want it.

For 2, yes that's kind of nice, but the minus is that now you have to
traverse all these classes rather than just having the relatively simple
kind of interface the SQL has.

The big minus in my mind is that OLEDB is much more of a proprietary
Microsoft technology so if you use it you pretty much are stuck with M$.
Also, OLEDB is newer so most older data sources will not support it & it's
not as widely adopted a standard.  (O.K. so OLEDB has and ODBC adaptor, but
then what is the point of using OLEDB.)  I dunno, I kind of think that it's
one of these things that Microsoft puts out which doesn't add a lot of value
but that they sell hard so that you will end up locked in to a M$ platform.