Re: [boost] Boost.SQL, SOCI and beyond

From: james.jones_at_[hidden]
Date: 2006-10-06 12:05:13

From: Nicola Musatti <Nicola.Musatti_at_[hidden]>
> I believe this is an instance of the need of representing concepts both in the
> SQL and in the C++ world. I see indicators as conceptually a part of the SQL
> world, in that they are a way to access additional, detailed information about
> the result of a query, beyond the retrieved value itself.
> 
> Once the value is converted to a C++ type it assumes a value in the domain of
> that type... or not. In this case boost::optional or its moral equivalent is a
> reasonable representation.
> 
> Side note: a while ago I wrote a Nullable<T> type that provided implicit
> conversion to T and threw an exception if it held a null value. Personally I'd
> prefer that kind of interface, but I think it's better to stick as much as
> possible to what's available in the standard library or in Boost.

I've been following this thread closely, as I have a need for a database library in C++ as well (don't we all?). I wrote my own, which serves my purposes OK, but would certainly be interested in a Boosted version.

On this particular point, while obviously indicator variables are the SQL way to provide information about data fields, having a separate variable is very much not in the spirit of C++. But it would be easy to define:

template<class DataType, class IndicatorType>
class value
{
private:
        IndicatorType	indicator;
        DataType		data;
public:
        bool is_null() const	{ return indicator.is_null(); }
        bool is_truncated() const	{ return indicator.is_truncated(); }
        /* ... other queries ... */
};

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