><grin> I just did a 45 minute presentation on this last night.
>
>"database independance" is very appropriate for some projects. Web bulletin
>boards are usually among them.
>
>If, however, your application depends on high performance, strong security, or
>rigorous and complex data integrity rules, the use of a client-side database
>abstraction layer is, at best, impractical.
>
>There is no one design strategy which is better than all others regardless of
>the application. Except maybe documenting your code. ;-)
>
>
>
There is a middle road. This limits the usefullness of databases like
MySQL, but would allow interoperability between, say Firebird and
PostgreSQL. This means abstracting the basic syntax differences
betweent the two and then building robust and compatible backends on
each. Yeah, it is more of a QA problem than anything else, but it is
quite doable.
Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
