Data source options

Does anyone have an idea for an architecture with a hosted
browser-based database application where the backing database is not
hosted by the same provider?

If you look at various rich internet applications, the software and the
database are often both hosted. That is how gmail works as well as
emerging hosted word processing applications and other ajax web
pages/apps. There might be an option of pulling the data down to your
PC, such as by using popmail in combination with gmail or e-mailing a
document to yourself, but there is no option on where you store your
data when interacting with the application.

We often use client-based applications with client or server data
persistence (e.g. Word) in addition to the hosted applications with
hosted data. I am looking for any examples of hosted browser-UI
database applications where the user indicates a data source that can
be anywhere accessible on the internet.

This is more likely in the SQL world, but I'm not looking for database
independence -- the specific database tool can be fixed. I'm looking
for database-location independence in an application hosted as a web
browser application.

I would like to write a piece of software that can be used by anyone
but where I host the app and not the database software or data. If
someone wants to use it, they need to have a database somewhere (of
whatever type is required by the application) and the application will
take the data source specification as input. I might want to use a
service-oriented architecture where the read and writes to the database
are not with a direction connection, but I have not seen a example of
that either.

In case I haven't said this right yet, it would be a free for use,
no-installation required, database application where the database is or
possibly where to put the database if it is not already there. People
could then use the very same application, but have completely separate
databases.

There might be more issues than I would want to tackle to do this, but
I'm curious whether there are examples or not. Thanks. --dawn

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: polymorphism (was: Poly Couples)
    ... but this is not really "business software"... ... Most of such applications are built as a combination of ... database with flat files or a different RDBMS vendor?" ... couldn't care less if I do it in using structured programming or OOP ...
    (comp.object)
  • Re: Unisys OS/2200 DMS / TIP / COBOL Migration
    ... support the legacy system api's that the application is using. ... differences in COBOL compiler dialects. ... What DBI does is to provide legacy database (DMS) ... the legacy database to the COBOL applications. ...
    (comp.sys.unisys)
  • Re: Database set up help
    ... let's see...I choose the y/n data type because I am using ... User opens up form and enters Employee Information in the fields ... 2 of the 38 options in my main menu are BPCS Applications ... I set up a database with this so far: ...
    (microsoft.public.access.gettingstarted)
  • Re: Advice needed for a growing Access 2000 project
    ... However, it turned out that quite a few of those were "leftovers" from previous releases, no longer accessible from anywhere but the database window, and, thus, no longer used. ... But that certainly isn't the _norm_ -- without any 'heroic' measures, there are routine reports of split Access DBs ... Finally, in my opinion, for "Windows apps", that is, individual-user applications, modest-sized multiuser applications, and client-server applications of any size, Dot Net does NOT "help along" any of these issues. ... The post I reference was in reference its self to the MS Access Help file under "Microsoft Access database general specifications" ...
    (comp.databases.ms-access)
  • Re: POD speed
    ... But I do think that there are costs to making a design decision ... > an OO data persistence layer that happens to use a relational database ... Would you see it as reasonable that two applications accessing the same database tables ... > what a business software system will be like years from now. ...
    (comp.lang.java.databases)