Database choices

Question

I have a prickly design issue regarding the choice of database technologies to use for a group of new applications. The final suite of applications would have the following database requirements...

Central databases (more than one database) using mysql (must be mysql due to justhost.com).

An application to be written which accesses the multiple mysql databases on the web host. This application will also write to local serverless database (sqlite/firebird/vistadb/whatever).

Different flavors of this application will be created for windows (.NET), windows mobile, android if possible, iphone if possible.

So, the design task is to minimise the quantity of code to achieve this. This is going to be tricky since the languages used are already c# / java (android) and objc (iphone). Not too worried about that, but can the work required to implement the various database access layers be minimised?

The serverless database will hold similar data to the mysql server, so some kind of inheritance in the DAL would be useful.

Looking at hibernate/nhibernate and there is linq to whatever. So many choices!

Answer 1

but can the database access layer be reused?

Yes it can be but you have to be carefully create a loosely coupled datalayer with no dependeny on other parts.

Answer 2

Get a better host. Seriously - SQL Server hosts don't cost that much more. An hour development time possibly per month - and that is already non-conervative.

Otherwise - throw out stuff you do not need. Neutralize languages to one. If that is an internet access stuff, check out OData for exposing data - nice nidependant protocol

The resit sis architecture. and LINQ (2Sql) sucks - compared to nhibernate ;)