This example shows how to generate and use a database schema that is embedded into the application rather than stored as a separate SQL file. The example consists of the following files: person.hxx Header file defining the 'person' persistent class. person-odb.hxx person-odb.ixx person-odb.cxx These files contain the database support code as well as the embedded database schema for the person.hxx header. They are generated by the ODB compiler from person.hxx using the following command line: odb -d <database> --generate-schema --schema-format embedded \ --generate-query person.hxx Where <database> stands for the database system we are using, for example, 'mysql'. The --generate-schema option requests the generation of the database schema. The --schema-format option is used to instruct the ODB compiler to embed the schema into the generated C++ files. It is also possible to generate the schema creation code into a separate source file by passing the 'separate' value instead of 'embedded' to the --schema-format option. This is primarily useful if you want to place the schema creation functionality into a separate program or library. database.hxx Contains the create_database() function which instantiates the concrete database class corresponding to the database system we are using. driver.cxx Driver for the example. It includes the person.hxx and person-odb.hxx headers to gain access to the persistent classes and their database support code. It also includes database.hxx for the create_database() function declaration. In main() the driver first calls create_database() to obtain the database instance. It then uses the ODB schema catalog to create the database schema. During this step the generated code issues a number of SQL statements that drop and create necessary database tables, etc. After the database schema is ready, the driver persists a number of 'person' objects, performs a database query, and prints the information about the returned objects. To compile and link the example manually from the command line we can use the following commands (using MySQL as an example; replace 'c++' with your C++ compiler name): c++ -c person-odb.cxx c++ -DDATABASE_MYSQL -c driver.cxx c++ -o driver driver.o person-odb.o -lodb-mysql -lodb To run the driver, using MySQL as an example, we can execute the following command: ./driver --user odb_test --database odb_test Here we use 'odb_test' as the database login and also 'odb_test' as the database name.