When is it preferable to store data members as references instead of pointers?

Question

Let\'s say I have an object Employee_Storage that contains a database connection data member. Should this data member be stored as a pointer or as a reference?

Answer 1

It's only preferable to store references as data members if they're being assigned at construction, and there is truly no reason to ever change them. Since references cannot be reassigned, they are very limited.

In general, I typically store as pointers (or some form of templated smart pointer). This is much more flexible - both for testing (as you mentioned) but also just in terms of normal usage.