I have an application with a huge code base which uses an Oracle database. I want to develop an hibernate app which can interact with incoming and outgoing request from the above said application without any dependencies of database.
Like if I want to change the database to mysql or postgresql it would not have any problem. Is this practical? Can it be done? Asking for help.
As to practicality, very seldom does an app ever change databases. While the idea sounds great it isn't often done and generally the benefits you can get from using built in database features sometimes outweighs the work of keeping it database independent.
As to it being done, it certainly can between SQL databases. To go from SQL to noSQL is a bit more tricky as they are in the process of supporting them in JPA. If interested in that take a look at Hibernate OGM. If you want to truly keep it so you can easily switch databases you need to stick to the JPA standard. See this on generating JPA compliant entities from the database. So long as you use ONLY JPA you can easily switch between the databases that provide a JPA implementation. Then you just include the correct implementation set the dialect and you are switched.
If you have access to change the current application it will probably be easier to just update each of the actions that contain the hard coded queries with your JPA code. If you have unit testing that would make this process much easier as well.
If you want to write something new, but not change the front end, you would need to handle whatever actions your forms on the front end are submitting. Making sure to make them available at the same path and with the same HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, etc.), that take the same parameters, and returning the same structure as what your actions due today.
Both approaches would allow you to go action by action replacing them. With writing something new though, replacing them one at a time is a little more difficult if both the new app and old app aren't in the same domain OR if authentication/authorization is involved.
Good luck and best wishes!
