A native approach to object-relational mapping for C++

The most popular paradigm in developing software systems is Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Due to several reasons, the relational model is still the most common paradigm in the database market. Therefore, many systems rely on these two technologies. However, due to fundamental incompatibilities between them, data exchange between the two domains cannot occur seamlessly in terms of their entities, that is, class objects and table records. So, different mapping strategies have been found to help in matching the two domains. Furthermore, databases are standalone systems and separate from the code base under development, so one domain's entities need to be converted first into raw data before they can be converted into entities of the other's. Such a conversion is referred to as Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) and has been implemented manually before the widespread use of tools that automated this process. ORM tools help in abstracting the data layer away from the rest of the code. This, in addition to abstracting the database vendor, makes the code shorter, testable, and easier to maintain. Although many ORM tools have been developed for almost every OOP language, no native and non-intrusive tool has existed for C++. In this thesis, a novel approach for implementing the data layer natively in C++ using ORM is introduced.