   Applet Database question
  I am thinking about writing a web-based city building game.  I want to use a client side language so that i can implement simple animations.  But the downside is that the animations are render based on query results from a SQL database.  Because of this I would like be able to use multiple SQL databases to share the process load. I was wondering if I could get some suggestions on what language to use.  From what i read and applet would be a descent client side choice, but I am worried about the latency and the feasibility of implementing the database interaction required by this game.  Therefore I was wondering if anyone could provide me with some suggestions on what client-side language I should use?.  Right now i have a IIS web server and a msSQL database.  I am a competent programmer therefore I am not intimidated by learning a new language .   
  Why would animation speeds depend on database interaction? Multiple building versions during construction? I'd say, move it to the client: the server receives the construction command, checks if it's valid and if so, sends a confirmation back to the client. The client starts displaying the new building, and, because it knows how long it'll take to finish, it'll change the image every once in a while untill the building is finished. There might be a small difference between the client and the server at that point, so you could wait untill the server sends a message telling the building is finished, but usually that's only a tiny difference.The basic idea here is to let the client predict as much as he can, while synchronizing it with the server only at crucial times. It depends on the game when these times are - perhaps periodically, perhaps only when certain things happen.I can't give you any hints on what database and language to use though, I'll leave that to someone with more experience in this field. Good luck. :)   ;  Thanks for the reply.  I guess my question is how scalable would be the database interaction of the applet.  Just wondering if there is a better solution.  I was thinking more along the lines of giving not more than 20 units pre-defined orders, saving them in a class and then having the applet animate the results of the orders.  So i guess I would load the classes and start the animation after the player hits "run". Once the unit classes are loaded the only other database interaction would be posting the results back to the database.   