title: Mobile platform communicating directly to database or via web service?
body: <p>I see two ways of going about feeding data to and from a mobile application.</p>
  
  <p>First would be to directly connect to the database and perform queries directly.</p>
  
  <p>The other option would be to build a REST API and indirectly interact with the database through a web service. There's a bit of a security hole here, which makes me think the former might be best.</p>
  
  <p>I realize this doesn't touch specifically on a question about code, but moreso on the methodology of the scenario.</p>
  
  <p>What are your thoughts?</p>