[odb-users] Objects without primitive fields & NULL data to BLOB

[Boris Kolpackov]

Hi Alexander,

Alexander Prokhorov <prokher at gmail.com> writes:

> 1. [clear bug] It took some time to pinpoint exact problem, which is  
> this - objects without any primitive fields can't be loaded. So, when  
> persistent object contains only collections, load fails with syntax  
> error - odb generates broken query like "SELECT FROM ...". Look into  
> attached example odb_collections_test. Simple workaround is to add dummy  
> primitive field to persistent class.

Fixed, thanks for the report and the test! Would you like a pre-release
with the fix (the fix affects the ODB compiler)?


> 2. [bug or feature] Another strange thing that was encountered in same  
> persistent classes - saving NULL data to "blob" type by custom traits.  
> It's unclear, whether such operation is valid, however, I haven't found  
> deep traits description that is deep enough to figure it out. It fails  
> with 'object already persistent' message, which is, at least,  
> perplexing. Message is clearly bad, the question is, can we save NULL  
> blob at all? Non-null with zero size is ok. Look into attached example  
> odb_traits_test.

Your data member in the persistent class does not allow NULL values.
To enable NULL, you will need to add the 'null' specifier to your
pragma, for example:

  #pragma db type("BLOB") null
  KludgyBool data;

You can also enable this on the per-type basis, if you wish:

#pragma db value(KludgyBool) type("BLOB") null

Newer versions of ODB also indicate whether the value can or cannot
be NULL via the is_null by-reference argument. That is, before calling
set_image(), ODB initializes this argument to true if the value can be
NULL and false otherwise.

As for why you get 'object already persistent' instead of, say 'NULL
constraint violation', see Section 14.5.4, "Constraint Violations"
in the ODB manual:

http://www.codesynthesis.com/products/odb/doc/manual.xhtml#14.5.4

Boris