This example shows how to use composite value types as data members in objects (including as object id members) and other value types, as element types in containers, and as base types for other composite value types. It also shows how to use composite value type data members in queries. The example consists of the following files: person.hxx Header file defining the 'basic_name', 'name_extras', 'name', and 'email_address' composite value types. It also defines the 'phone_numbers' composite value type as an instantiation of the 'std::pair' class template Finally it defines the 'person' persistent class which uses 'email_address' as its object id as well as 'name' and 'phone_numbers' in its other data members. person-odb.hxx person-odb.ixx person-odb.cxx person.sql The first three files contain the database support code and the last file contains the database schema for the person.hxx header. These files are generated by the ODB compiler from person.hxx using the following command line: odb -d <database> --generate-schema --generate-query person.hxx Where <database> stands for the database system we are using, for example, 'mysql'. 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 persists a 'person' object, loads it and updates its nickname and aliases which reside in a composite value type, then re-loads the object and prints its name to verify that the changes have been made persistent. Finally, the driver performs a database query which uses a data member from the composite value type in its criterion. 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 example we may first need to create the database schema (for some database systems, such as SQLite, the schema is embedded into the generated code which makes this step unnecessary). Using MySQL as an example, this can be achieved with the following command: mysql --user=odb_test --database=odb_test < person.sql Here we use 'odb_test' as the database login and also 'odb_test' as the database name. Once the database schema is ready, we can run the example (using MySQL as the database): ./driver --user odb_test --database odb_test