Scenario I haven\'t faced this requirement before, so I\'m not confident with my

Question

Scenario
I haven't faced this requirement before, so I'm not confident with my solution. Our team drew up a plan to design a web application using a basic HAT stack for a project with a 4 month development time. We presented it to the client, who added two big new requirements. The requirements were:

The application must be runnable on any web server (IIS, Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, etc...)
The application must be able to work with any database (MySQL, MongoDB, etc...)
His reasoning is that he has no control over the environments where the web application will be installed on. He plans on re-selling our solution to other customers.

We pushed back to the client saying that this would increase development time, but he has already committed to his clients. However, he said he is willing to put as much money into it to get it done.

Possible Solution?
The only solution I could think of was building the application in Perl CGI script as that seems the most universal, then having a variety of database adapters to plugin into an ORM, which is customized through a config file.

Question
What alternatives are there to creating a web application where we have no control over what modules, etc.. are installed in the web server?
Is this even possible?

Explanation / Answer

The biggest problem you have is going to be with the databases. Within relational databases, you've got some dialectical differences between them (things that postgres does differently than mysql or oracle) - different functions, different column types. This will make writing the proper query and creating the proper database schema difficult.

With Hibernate (Java stack), it is possible to forward engineer the database. You create the objects and the ORM layer creates the corresponding database. That said, this is means that everything you do is through the ORM. (I think there is a corresponding thing in Ruby somewhere, not that I'd recommend ruby).

Adding in "any database" to that which includes things such as Mongo means that the ORM just doesn't do it anymore. Even Perl's DBI doesn't have a corresponding DBD layer for Mongo - the paradigm for the database is just too different.

You could add another layer in front of the ORM to have your ORM layer with hand coded database drivers for Mongo, Couch, NoSQL Flavor of the week, etc... But now you are coding each layer again and again.

I believe that fundamentally your client doesn't understand the nature of what he is asking for. Being able to run anywhere with no control over what is installed, or even the database that backbends it is an impossible task.

You may wish to consider pitching a deployment of a virtual machine. This has the entire stack that you want/need on it in one package that is then deployed to some other machine that is running the VM. You put the database, the web server, the application server, etc.. in that VM and that VM is deployed.

Anywhere they can run a virtual machine (anywhere), the stack can be deployed. Its only one thing that is needed on the target machine - the virtual machine player.

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