Simplest way to develop an app that can use multiple types of databases?

I have a project for a class which requires that if a database is used, options exist for the user to pick a database to use which could be of a different type. So while I can use e.g. MySQL for development, in the final version of the project, the user must be able to choose a database (Oracle, MySQL, SQLite, etc.) upon installation. What's the easiest way to go about this, if there is an easy way?

The language used is up to me as long as it's supported by the department's Linux machines, so it could be Java, PHP, Perl, etc. I've been researching and found info on ODBC, JDBC, and SQLJ (such as this) but I'm quite new to databases so I'm having a hard time figuring out what would be best for my needs. It's also possible 开发者_如何学运维there may not be a simple enough way to do this; the professor admitted he's not a database guy either and he seemed to think it would be easy without having a clear idea of what it would take.

This is for a web app, but it ought to be fairly straight forward, using for example HTML and Javascript on the client side and Java with a MySQL database on the server side. No mention has been made of frameworks so I think they're too much. I have the option of using Tomcat or Apache if necessary but the overall idea is to keep things simple, and everything used should be able to be installed/changed/configured with just user level access. So something like having to recompile PHP to use ODBC would be out, I think.

Within these limitations, what would be the best way (if any) to be able to interact with an arbitrary database?

The issue I think you will have here is that SQL is not truely standard. What I mean is that vendors (Oracle, MySQL etc) have included types and features that are not SQL standard in order to "tie you in" to their DB, such as Oracle's VARCHAR2 and so on.

When I was at university, my final year project was to create an application that allowed users to create relational databases using JDBC with a Java front-end.

The use of JDBC was very simple but the issue was finding enough SQL features/types that all the vendors have in common. So they could switch between them without any issues. A way round this is to implement modules to deal with vendor specific issues and write ways to translate between them. So for example you may develop a database for MySQL with lots of MySQL specific code in that, but then you may want to use Oracle and then there are issues, which you would need to resolve.

I would spend some time looking at what core SQL standard all the vendors implement and then code for these features. But I think the technology you use wouldn't be the issue but rather the SQL you create.

Hope this helps, apologies if its not helpful!

Well, you can go two ways (in Java):

1. You can develop your own classes to work with different databases and load their drivers in JDBC. This way you will create a data access layer for yourself, which takes some time.

2. You can use Hibernate (or other ORMs). This way Hibernate will take care of things for you and you only have to know how to use Hibernate. Learning Hibernate may take some time, but when you get used to it, it can be very useful for your future projects.

If you want to stick Java there Hibernate (which wouldn't require a framework). Hibernate is fairly easy to use. You write HQL which gets translated to the SQL needed for the database you're using.

Maybe use an object relational mapper (ORM) or database abstraction layer (DAL). They are designed to provide a standard API to multiple database backends, making it possible to switch between different backends with minimal or no changes to your code. In Python, for example, a popular ORM is SQLAlchemy, and an excellent DAL is the web2py DAL (it's part of the web2py framework but can be used as a standalone DAL outside the framework as well). There are many other options in other languages as well.

use a framework with database abstraction layer and orm . try symfony or rails

There are a lot of Object relational database frameworks, unless you prefer jdbc. For simple/small applications this should work fine.