When the World Wide Web
started to evolve, around 1995, it didn’t take long
before databases entered the scene. First came flat file
text based databases driven by CGI / Perl scripts. After
that the web programming languages ASP, PHP and ColdFusion,
that more or less built their whole concept on their database
connectivity and their middleware capabilities.Nowadays
those web programming languages have a much wider range
of functions, but are still mostly used in conjunction
with some form of database connectivity.If you surf the
web right now, every other web site you visit use some
form of a database to achieve the things that is impossible
to achieve with the old static programming techniques.
First of all, there is a lot of different database software.
The most widely known for non-geeks is maybe Microsoft
Access.Using Microsoft Access on the web isn't such a
good choice because it has many limitations. It can be
used on small web sites with low traffic, but as a backbone
for a production web site we certainly recommend a more
powerful choice.
Among the most powerful databases with the widest support
on the web today you’ll find Microsoft’s SQL
Server and MySQL. Other choices for a web database could
be 4D, Sybase, Oracle and, PostgreSQL.
The secret isn’t all about the backbone database
software you choose. Most of the troubles with slow loading
time on database integrated web pages depends on poorly
designed databases, badly tuned SQL questions or unclean
code in the middleware scripting languages. Ok, the benefits
with a fine tuned database driven web site are plenty!
- The benefits of a database ! First
of all… It can handle most of the tedious and boring
stuff of the web masters shoulder; updates, schedules,
booking, customer data, inventory catalogues, member lists.
They can all be automated, and in worst case, written
once and used forever.With a well planned database, designed
to hold all possible data, you can present the information
from it in numerous way. Just a small change in the code
of the scripting language can change the whole presentation.
- Add interactivity to that! The users
on your site will be able to change content depending
on their choices. Searchable databases can present your
information in a second with just the data that the visitor
is interested in. Imagine you have a web store with 1,000
products, and for every product you have a information
page that describes the product with an image, price and
a text description. That means you will have 1,000 different
pages! Every time you change the price, remove a product
or add a product, you will have to manually change the
page, remove it or add a new one.
- Then imagine
that you have 1 page… yes, ONE Page!!!
One page that can do the exact same things that
all those other 1000 pages can do, and all you have to
do is write the new price, add a few lines or remove a
post in a database. That's a huge difference, or what
do you think? That’s how a web database works. A
web page template shows different things depending on
the “values” sent to it through a link, form
or a search box. On top of that you can add more functionality.
How about inventory information for example? If you’re
out of stock on a product it won’t show up at all...
automatically! You won't risk grumpy customers that ordered
it and wonder why on earth you don’t have the products
that you sell. “They are on your web page for god’s
sake!” Well, you know the drill.
So you see that there's a lot of power and time to win
with a database enabled web site. The web pages create
themselves, the maintenance of the site is minimal, and
you can spend your valuable time on other things.
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