Re: [boost] SOCI 2.2.0 - The C++ Database Access Library

From: Jeff Garland (jeff_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-12-05 07:52:52

Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It's already a matter of "tradition" that all database discussions here 
> have something to do with SOCI. ;-)

As is tradition, I'll chime in ;-)

> To confirm this "tradition", I would like to announce that the new 
> version (2.2.0) of the SOCI library is available for download:
> 
> http://soci.sourceforge.net/

Hooray (dances around room)!

> This new version provides:
 >
  ...snip good stuff...
 >
> I would like to stress that the ODBC support was our important milestone 
> that now allows us to claim a quite extensive coverage of existing 
> database technologies. With this in mind, SOCI becomes even more serious 
> and our roadmap for the nearest future is to bring the library to the 
> state that will make it a valid candidate for inclusion into Boost. We 
> will therefore welcome your guidance and suggestions w.r.t. Boost 
> compliance.

It seems to me that there are a few basic things that need to be done:

- have a formal review
- convert to boost build
- refactor src tree to be boost-like (boost tree, finer grained headers/cpp files)
- write some tests (maybe I'm just missing them in the distro)?
- full reference docs

not necessarily in that order.  Personally I tend toward having the review 
sooner.  SOCI's interface as been mostly stable for awhile...although it looks 
like there's a few twists in this release.  The review may uncover other 
issues that need to be resolved. Or if the library were not accepted it would 
be quite painful to do a bunch of work to boostify and then decide to just 
stay independent.

Note that I expect the review for SOCI to be tough because it's a fairly large 
and complex domain/lib.  So we ought to ask the review manager for a longer 
review right up front.

> Note that up to this release, the library was deliberately developed 
> without any external dependencies, so there are obviously wide areas 
> where Boost might be applied within the library itself (example: 
> intrusive pointers to manage some refcounted objects). This is easy.

And not critically important for review or acceptance.

> The more difficult part is the library interface and its general philosophy.

Not sure I understand the problem here...

Jeff