Question

I ran into real brick wall trying to connect to dynamic databases. And I don’t know how to achieve this,

Here is my process, I have an application where it needs to be adaptable to changes in the work environment, say If the work places server crashes and they create a new database with the name db_new the application would connect to that instead of the old database name.

I already have a window that displays the databases from the server on a listbox where the user can specify which database to use for the application. But the issue is, how can I save the selected database name so that it can run after the new database is selected? ..

as in the administrator should be able to change the database the application uses if necessary and the application should keep on using that selected database till the administrator changes it back to a new one.

Please forgive if the question a bit vague, I just put it together in the best way I could, any help on this would be really great 🙂

EDIT:

And I cannot use text files or xml s as the database name the application uses should be stored in a secure manner. 🙂

Answer 1

First of all, you can very easily use a text or XML file: If you store the information in a file, that can’t be downloaded by the user (as I assume you would), this is as safe as it can be: If somebody manages to break into the server and read the file, it’s game over anyway.

That said, I would recommend you use MySQL proxy or a similar mechanism and point your WebApp at it – failing over to another database or changing the underlying database could then be handled at the proxy layer without the WebApp even knowing about it: The functionality need not be part of your application and in my book it shouldn’t.