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

From: Maciej Sobczak (prog_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-12-06 03:08:19

Jarrad Waterloo wrote:

> I know the review hasn't even been requested yet but here are some interface
> suggestions.
> 
> 1) Session constructor that takes a std::map<basic_string<>, basic_string<>>
> as the second parameter instead of "service=orcl user=scott password=tiger".

I'm not convinced.
First of all, std::map is nothing special. Why not unordered_map? It 
would be probably better to provide a dedicated helper function that 
takes the map and build the string from it.
Second, some servers don't expect key=value pairs, there might be 
something entirely different (for example, SQLite3 expects just a filename).

> 2) With respect to the first request, standard names for username, password
> and ... that gets mapped automatically into database specific parameter
> names.

How would you like to use it?

> 3) CLOB ie. Ntext that automatically gets extracted as a string field.
> 4) CLOB class to complement your Blob class

Yes, these two are considered.

> 5) A STL compatiple stream interface to your Blob.

It's not necessarily portable. Various servers differ widely in how they 
approach BLOB as a concept. The whole idea needs more specs - how should 
the streaming operation relate to transactions, for example?

> 6) Official support for the wstring type

Indeed, this seems to be important.

> 7) A place to register data providers and to choose one programmatically so
> that ones code can be configured to use a different database without
> recompiling.

In a sense you can do this with SOCI. Backends are linked-in (so there 
is no run-time "registration") and the session is started with 
polymorphic reference to the backend factory.
If you expect entirely out-of-program registration/selection support, 
you have it in the form of ODBC.

-- 
Maciej Sobczak : http://www.msobczak.com/
Programming    : http://www.msobczak.com/prog/