Database abstraction layer: Difference between revisions

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{{Refimprove|date=September 2014}}

A '''database abstraction layer''' ('''DBAL'''<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.fr/books?id=2IfDCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA346&dq=%22Database+abstraction+layer%22+DBAL&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Database%20abstraction%20layer%22%20DBAL&f=false|title=JavaScript Frameworks for Modern Web Dev|authors=Tim Ambler, Nicholas Cloud|editor=Apress|date=13 October 2015}}</ref>) is an [[application programming interface]] which unifies the communication between a computer application and [[database]]s such as [[MSSQL|SQL Server]], [[IBM DB2|DB2]], [[MySQL]], [[PostgreSQL]], [[Oracle database|Oracle]] or [[SQLite]]. Traditionally, all database vendors provide their own interface tailored to their products, which leaves it to the application programmer to implement code for all database interfaces he or she would like to support. Database abstraction layers reduce the amount of work by providing a consistent API to the developer and hide the database specifics behind this interface as much as possible. There exist many abstraction layers with different interfaces in numerous programming languages. If an application has such a layer built in, it is called '''database-agnostic'''.<ref>http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/database-agnostic</ref>

== Database levels of abstraction ==

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=== Masked operations ===

Database abstraction layers may limit the number of available database operations to a subset of those supported by the supported database backends. In particular, database abstraction layers may not fully support database backend-specific optimizations or debugging features. These problems magnify significantly with database size, scale, and complexity.

== See also ==

* [[Object-relational mapping]]

== References ==