Reputation: 14573

Open source libraries for abstracting database access in C++?

I'm looking for options for abstracting database server details away from my application (in c++), I'd like to write my code to be independent of the actual database backend. I know MySQL has a nice library, but I don't want to be tied to a single database implementation. Are there good options for this?

Upvotes: 5

Answers (6)

Ale

Reputation: 997

OpenDBX and libzdb are two lightweight candidates. Libgda for GNOME.

Upvotes: 1

Tom

Reputation: 10819

My opinion is to forget about a cross-database driver, and focus on finding or creating a cross-database Data Access Layer. A few reaons:

Complex queries (read: anything that's not a toy) invariably end up using one or two database-specific features. LIMIT and OFFSET for example, commonly used for paging, isn't universal.
Sooner or later you'll want bulk insertion, and you'll want it to be as fast as possible, because 3 hours is better than 6 hours. Every database has a different "optimum" way to do this, so your DAL will need to special-case this anyways.
Different databases may expose different constraint mechanisms—even custom column types—that can be be worth taking advantage of where possible (PostgreSQL is wonderful for this).
If you want to do any application level caching, you'll need a DAL anyways.

So, go ahead and use libmysql by itself - just hide it behind a compiler firewall in your DAL, and be prepared to swap it out later. You can protect yourself from shifting infrastructure without having to use a lowest-common-denominator SQL wrapper.

If that doesn't jive with you, check out SQLAPI++.

Upvotes: 3

Eugen Constantin Dinca

Reputation: 9140

libodbc++ provides a pretty good API. Also the big guys Qt (see Kyle Lutz' answer) & wxWidgets have db abstraction layers, so it may be a good idea to use them if you plan to use/you're already using any other parts of those frameworks.

Upvotes: 1