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

I was trying to figure this out myself, so might as well post it. I conclude it doesn't seem to be a good idea to use reference data member because you could inadvertently create an alias when you go to initialize it.

#include 
using namespace std;
class stuff
{
public:
explicit stuff(int &a):x(a) //you have to initialize it here
{
//body intialization won't work
};
int& x; //reference data member
};

int main()
{
int A=100; 
stuff B(A);//intialize B.x
cout<