Re: [boost] database library (was Report from Berlin C++ Standards Committee meeting)

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-04-16 05:44:43

On Sun, 16 Apr 2006 08:28:39 +0300, Yuval Ronen wrote
> Jeff Garland wrote:
> >> The database compiler vendors 
> >> will suddenly have to provide with their compiler to satisfy the 
> >> standard requirements? Probably not... Compiler vendors won't start 
> >> writing databases (except Microsoft, of course :-) ). This means 
> >> that this standard interface would be directed to database vendors 
> >> rather than compiler vendors. Is this the plan? That database 
> >> vendors will start supplying C++ header files and lib files with a 
> >> "C++ Compliant" stamp?
> > 
> > You raise a good point. Virtually all database vendors supply an ODBC
> > interface -- so I would expect that this would be the primary basic 'driver
> > interface' supplied by companies building standard libraries.  However, I
> > would expect the architecture to allow for database or standard library
> > vendors to provide high performance native bindings for particular databases.
> 
> So we're standardizing ODBC? 

No -- the committe doesn't standardize Posix, but it is now getting leveraged
by implementations of several libraries.

> The committee would require 
> compiler/std-lib vendors to supply a C++ wrapper for ODBC (without 
> forbidding supplying additional wrappers with same interface for 
> other databases)?

Actually I don't think the proposal needs to require ODBC at all.  I was just
saying that a typical approach for library developers to get coverage across
many databases would be to use a common interface supported by many databases
in the implementation. But if they or a database company wants to provide a
really optimized version for a particular db, the design should allow it.

In any case, this would be going into a TR -- so it's optional for the vendors
anyway.

Jeff