Re: [boost] MySQL ASIO library

On Wed, 4 Mar 2020 at 10:31, Joseph Van Riper via Boost wrote:

On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 8:50 PM Ruben Perez via Boost wrote:

...

I have been writing an ASIO-based client for MySQL, trying to mimic what Beast is to HTTP. It currently supports SQL queries and prepared statements. It can be viewed here:

https://github.com/anarthal/mysql-asio

Do you guys think this has the potential to be useful or become part of Boost long term? Any feedback is very welcome.

Why just MySQL?

I would take more interest in a library capable of supporting many database engines. Or, if not such a variety, at least target ODBC, as you can reach more engines through ODBC drivers. [...] For a boost library, I would hope it would not limit the developer to a single engine.

This said, it would be interesting to see some sort of library become part of the standard library, and boost offers a track towards standardization. SQL databases are a time tested way to work with data, and I would certainly use a boost library capable of supporting the engines I use.

FYI, the RDB library is not a new topic on this list. Since I've just got a large Americano, I will dig the archives below :) It's more than a decade old with first proposals arriving in 2004 https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost//2004/10/74169.php During BoostCon 2009, the Library in Week initiative brainstormed the idea of std::rdb where number of Boost community members participated, see at the bottom of this page https://github.com/boostcon/2009_presentations There used to be a mailing list for std::rdb http://mail-lists.crystalclearsoftware.com/listinfo.cgi/std_rdb-crystalclear... In Sept 2009, Jean-Louis Leroy started arriving with some code for std::rdb, see number of threads: https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost//2009/09/index.php As https://github.com/soci/soci library with its unique, as for C+98/03, approach by Maciej Sobczak gained some attention, it had been discussed in the context of std::rdb and Boost number of times In 2010, Roland Bock resurrected the topic https://lists.boost.org/Archives/boost//2010/09/170947.php and arrived with a very interesting approach for C++11 https://github.com/rbock/sqlpp11 As long time maintainer of the SOCI library, I had also discussed possibilities to combine both approaches, run-time and compile-time binding, there are some posts in the archives. Roland presented sqlcpp11 on number of conferences in 2014 and 2015, you can find it on youtube. There is also https://github.com/rbock/sqlpp117 Another longish iteration of RDB discussions happened around 2013 when Thomas Neumann proposed DBI paper: https://isocpp.org/blog/2013/03/new-paper-n3612-desiderata-of-a-c11-database... and C++ ISO discussion groups on databases started https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/forum/#!forum/databases Each time the topic re-appeared, discussions were long and detailed, but far from any consensus and authors would drop the idea of submitting their libraries to Boost review. If you remember CMake for/in Boost debates, the RDB had lots in common :) I had been a maintainer of SOCI, a database abstraction library with support for DB2, Firebird, MySQL, Oracle, ODBC, PostgreSQL, SQLite for more than 10 years. Development of such a library is very time consuming, and long-term maintenance is even more time consuming, and often turns into a frustrating and thankless job full of DevOps hurdles, a job impossible to perform well without *multiple* *active* team members with DB backend specific exercise. (e.g. ad-hoc contributors submitting GitHub PRs become eventually more problematic than helpful). Finally, everyone has an opinion on how to get it right. It's just far from being as attractive as a year long gig to get a compact utility into Boost. Best regards, -- Mateusz Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net