I recently decided to use SOCI and SQLite at work and found that neither there is not a super straight forward path for setting this up. As of SOCI version 3.0.0 there is no support for Visual Studio 2008, so I had to convert and fix a few bugs resulting from that. There were some path issues as well. Also they don't package the SQLite interface with SOCI so you have to checkout the repo to get access to it. After getting that there are still a few snags, not to mention actually setting up SQLite as a library.
[Updated: 10/13/2009]
After writing this article the SOCI team has resolved some of these issues, so some of these steps are no longer necessary.
Step 1: Setup SQLite
Step 1.1
Download the SQLite 3.6.18 source and library files.
Step 1.2:
Unarchive the SQLite archives into a directory, mine will be c:\usr\sqlite3
Step 1.3:
Create the sqlite3.lib file by using Visual Studio's lib command:
LIB /DEF:sqlite3.def
Step 2: Setup SOCI
Step 2.1:
Download the head of SOCI's git repository
Step 2.2:
Decompress the file into another directory, mine will be c:\usr\soci
Step 2.3:
Soci requires stdint.h but Visual Studio 2008 does not provide it, so simply download pstdint.h and rename it to stdint.h in the soci\src\core directory.
Step 2.4:
Open the directory soci\build and copy msvc80 to msvc90.
Now open the msvc90\dll directory.
Through Visual Studio 2008, open the soci_dll.sln file and allow it to convert it with the default parameters.
Step 2.5: Build SOCI's Core and SQLite3
SOCI's core project should build without errors, but the sqlite project will have several.
Step 2.6: Fixing Build Errors
Now SOCI's core project should build without errors, but the sqlite3 project will definitely fail. It will give two specific errors:
fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: 'sqlite3.h': No such file or directory
and
error C3163: '_vsnprintf': attributes inconsistent with previous declaration
Both are relatively easy to fix.
Step 2.6.1: Fixing SQLite3 include paths
In Visual Studio, navigate to View->Property Manager, then in the pane that shows up, expand the sqlite3 project, then expand "Debug | Win32" then "soci_dll" then double-click on the "soci" object. Select "User Macros" on the sheet you find there.
Find SQLITE3_INCLUDE_DIR and SQLITE_LIB_DIR and change them to the directory created earlier, "c:\usr\sqlite3"
Step 2.6.2: Fixing _vsnprintf
[Update 10/13/2009]
This step is no longer needed.
Expand the core project and look for soci-platform.h and find a line that says "HAVE_VSNPRINTF"
This is redefining something that VS2008 provides already and confuses the hell out of the compiler. Just comment it out, or change it to look like:
// Define if you have the vsnprintf variants.
#if _MSC_VER < 1500
# define HAVE_VSNPRINTF 1
# define vsnprintf _vsnprintf
#endif
Step 2.7 Building SOCI's sqlite3_test project
This project will be riddled with errors unless you have boost installed. I personally don't use it, so had to comment out large chunks of common-tests.h. Specifically, comment out the area at the top where it includes the boost headers. Also comment out the contents of test26, test28 and test30.
Also add this line at the bottom of soci-platform.h:
#undef SOCI_USE_BOOST
Finished
Now you should have a working copy of SOCI 3.0.0 with SQLite3 support in Visual Studio 2008. Congratulations!