[boost] Re: RTL status -"help wanted". Was: Library Proposal: database (boost::db)

From: Steve Hutton (shutton_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-16 18:52:34

On 2004-10-16, Jeff Garland <jeff_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 04:26:12 -0500, David B. Held wrote
>> Arkadiy Vertleyb wrote:
>> 
>> Don't give up.  DB apps are a huge portion of the market (possibly 
>> the biggest, I imagine), so I don't see how anyone who has done db work
>> could think there isn't demand for good db libraries.  The main 
>> problem, I think, is getting people to improve one good wheel 
>> instead of inventing many mediocre ones.
>
> I would put a library that provides portable odbc based RDB access on my top 5
> list of libraries I'd like to see - and I mean not only in Boost, but in the
> standard. For most non-trivial applications this is a clear need and lots of
> time is spent on projects making this work. It's one of those things that
> makes people want to use JAVA or some other language. But, I recognize that it
> is a large and difficult effort - so I'm not that optimistic...

Yes, I think efforts to come up with a boost rdbms library have so far failed
because it is a big task - the challenge is similar to creating a gui or 
networking library.

I suggest that the best way around this is to work incrementally - starting with
a first release that is limited in scope, and building momentum from there.
Maciej Sobczak's soci library, referenced elsewhere in this thread, seems to 
have potential along those lines.  
 
Why not make simple boost::db that does 80% of what's commonly used, with a 
simple interface, and then go from there with later additions?  Just having a 
modern library that can execute sql against the leading databases would be a 
huge win.  

Steve