Choosing C++ for a projects where databases are involved is probably rare
Well it's what I spend quite a lot of my time doing, and I find it a good combination. But then I often seem to be doing things differently from everyone else... In my case I have written a C++ binding for PostgreSQL's libpq which allows me to define queries as functors: Query<string,int> insert_thing(db, "insert into things(name,qty) values ($1,$2)"); SingletonQuery<int, string> count_things(db, "select sum(qty) from things where name=$1"); insert_thing("table",1); insert_thing("chair",4); int n_pens = count_things("pen"); Note the template type parameters in the query declarations. These give the C++ types corresponding to the $n parameter placeholders in the SQL, and are mapped to the "oids" (in postgresql-speak) of the corresponding SQL types. The queries are prepared, and when they are run the parameters are passed to the database server in binary format. You get compile-time checking that the types in the query invocations match those in the declarations and run-time checking that the backend is happy with those types. I like this approach as it gives about as much type safety as is possible and lets you do database accesses with essentially the same syntax that you would use to access C++ data. I prefer this to the way that SOCI is used, where you always know that you're using SQL (though SOCI no doubt has other features that my library is missing). There is more detail here: http://svn.chezphil.org/libpbe/trunk/doc/Database I would be happy to describe my experiences further if anyone is considering adding something along these lines to Boost. My code is currently GPL but I am flexible about that. Regards, Phil.