# Ways to Develop Business Components for Foreign Datasources

Through JDeveloper, Business Components for Java has design-time and runtime support for building business components against Oracle8i Lite and any generic (standards-based) databases.

This means that you may want to:

- Develop an application that can use any standards-based database - Use this scenario if you do not have an Oracle8i database. You can also configure Oracle8i to work in this mode, but there are limitations.

- Develop an application that uses an Oracle8i Lite database - Use this scenario if you want to develop and application for an Oracle8i Lite database.

- Develop an application that will allow you to switch databases - Use this scenario if you want to be able to switch between Oracle8i and a standards-based database.

- Develop an application for a custom database - Use this scenario if you have a non-Oracle database that uses enhanced datatypes not described by the SQL92 standard.

- Modify a legacy Business Components project - If you have a legacy Business Components project, you can make it work with foreign datasources. Note that this is very difficult and largely unadvisable. There is no wizard support for doing this.

- Develop an application by matching schemas - At design time, use an Oracle8i database whose schema exactly matches the intended runtime schema. You can then modify your application to use an Oracle8i Lite or generic SQL connection (SQL92) for runtime testing and deployment.