I'd like to hear from your thinking and experience about this.

I want to write an application.

This application have two database access mode: sometimes connected to a remote database by Internet (extranet) and sometimes executing connected locally to a database on the computer.

The perfect solution will ask only one application to deal with both access mode.

When the application run locally, it won't even be connected to the Internet (it will all be local).

I was thinking of a kind of application that can be executed in a browser (I want to support recent version of IE and Netscape).

So now that the facts are there, what can I do? Is it realistic today? What do we need (tools and software)?

I am open to all your suggests! There won't be any wrong answer to this question!!!