ACE vs Boost vs POCO

As rdbound said, Boost has a "near STL" status. So if you don't need another library, stick to Boost. However, I use POCO because it has some advantages for my situation. The good things about POCO IMO:

• Better thread library, especially a Active Method implementation. I also like the fact that you can set the thread priority.

• More comprehensive network library than boost::asio. However boost::asio is also a very good library.

• Includes functionality that is not in Boost, like XML and database interface to name a few.

• It is more integrated as one library than Boost.

• It has clean, modern and understandable C++ code. I find it far easier to understand than most of the Boost libraries (but I am not a template programming expert :)).

• It can be used on a lot of platforms.

Some disadvantages of POCO are:

• It has limited documentation. This somewhat offset by the fact that the source is easy to understand.

• It has a far smaller community and user base than, say, Boost. So if you put a question on Stack Overflow for example, your chances of getting an answer are less than for Boost

• It remains to be seen how well it will be integrated with the new C++ standard. You know for sure that it will not be a problem for Boost.

I never used ACE, so I can't really comment on it. From what I've heard, people find POCO more modern and easier to use than ACE.

Some answers to the comments by Rahul:

1. I don't know about versatile and advanced. The POCO thread library provides some functionality that is not in Boost: ActiveMethod and Activity, and ThreadPool. IMO POCO threads are also easier to use and understand, but this is a subjective matter.

2. POCO network library also provides support for higher level protocols like HTTP and SSL (possibly also in boost::asio, but I am not sure?).

3. Fair enough.

4. Integrated library has the advantage of having consistent coding, documentation and general "look and feel".

5. Being cross-platform is an important feature of POCO, this is not an advantage in relation to Boost.

Again, you should probably only consider POCO if it provides some functionality you need and that is not in Boost.

I recently got a new job and work on a project that uses ACE and TAO. Well, what I can tell is, that ACE and TAO work and fully accomplish their tasks. But the overall organisation and design of the libraries are quite daunting...

For example, the main part of ACE consists of hundreds of classes starting with "ACE_". It seems like they've ignored namespaces for decades.

Additionally, many of ACE's class names don't provide useful information either. Or can you guess what classes like ACE_Dev_Poll_Reactor_Notify or ACE_Proactor_Handle_Timeout_Upcall can be used for?

Additonally, the documentation of ACE is really lacking, so unless you want to learn ACE the hard way (it is really hard without any good documentation..), I would NOT recommend using ACE, unless you really need TAO for CORBA, If you don't need CORBA, go ahead and use some modern libraries..

Boost enjoys a "near STL" status due to the number of people on the C++ standards committee who are also Boost developers. Poco and ACE do not enjoy that benefit, and from my anecdotal experience Boost is more widespread.

However, POCO as a whole is more centered around network-type stuff. I stick to Boost so I can't help you there, but the plus for Boost is its (relatively) widespread use.

The ACE socket libraries are solid. If you are trying to port a standard implementation of sockets you can't go wrong. The ACE code sticks to a rigid development paradigm. The higher level contructs are a little confusing to use. The rigid paradigm causes some anomolies with exception handling. There are or used to be situations where string value pairs being passed into an exception with one of the pair being null causes an exception throw in the exception that will boggle you. The depth of the class layering is tedious when debugging. I have never tried the other libraries so can't make an intelligent comment.

Boost is great, I've only heard good things about POCO (but never used) but I don't like ACE and would avoid it in future. Although you will find fans of ACE you will also find many detractors which you don't tend to get with boost or poco (IME), to me that sends a clear signal that ACE is not the best tool (although it does what it says on the tin).

Out of those I've only ever really used ACE. ACE is a great framework for cross-platform enterprise networking applications. It's extremely versatile and scalable and comes with TAO and JAWS for quick, powerful development of ORB and/or Web based applications.

Getting up to speed with it can be somewhat daunting, but there is a lot of literature on it, and commercial support available.

It's somewhat heavy though, so for smaller-scale apps it may be a bit of an overkill. Reading the summary for POCO it sounds like they're aiming for a system that can be run on embedded systems so I'm assuming it can be used in a much lighter way. I may now give it a whirl :P