The signature feature of polymorphically mapped types is that application code doesn't know what their concrete mapper classes are. E.g. code that stores and retrieves uint16_ts knows that they're mapped by some class that implements the interface abstract_mapper<uint16_t>, but it doesn't know which class; and so far, we haven't had much to say about it.

Each backend library has default concrete mapper classes for all of the polymorphically mapped types (see the tables here and here). When we don't say otherwise, quince consults the backend library (whichever one is in charge of the database we are using), and uses its default mapper classes. But we can say otherwise, and sometimes we should say otherwise, because the defaults don't suit every purpose.

For any polymorphically mapped type T, we can specify a concrete mapper class to map all instances of T in a particular database, or all instances of T in a particular table.

So there are two steps. First get hold of a concrete mapper class, then deploy it to a database or table.

For the first step, you can define a new concrete mapper class, i.e. your own subclass of abstract_mapper<T> that implements all its pure virtuals. But I'm not going to document that process here, because (a) the most wanted customizations don't require it, and (b) it would involve a detour into quince's lower layers that you don't need to see for any other purpose. ^[15]

The most wanted customizations are for numeric types that the DBMS doesn't represent directly. E.g. PostgreSQL doesn't have a built-in column type for uint16_t. Quince_postgresql supplies a default uint16_t mapper that uses a 32-bit signed integer, because to me that seemed like a good idea at the time, but for you it might be no good at all. In that case you probably want to represent uint16_t in a signed 16-bit integer, and there are a few ways to do that, with different pros and cons.

Quince defines an assortment of concrete mapper classes that are ready to use in cases like this. You just need to understand what they do, make your choice, and deploy it.