Database driven web applications

None is more famous than Amazon. Quite simply it is the gold standard in Database Driven Web Applications. There are no better sites for finding not just information but engaging with the database. The emphasis is on easy browsing of large sets of data and finding records- be it a new TV or a book.

A database driven website is a website that pulls a large amount of it's content from a database. Therefore the content it delivers is not static, but can be specific to the logged on user, or a business process or the actual page itself.

Because the content is stored in a central location (the database), any change to that content is reflected on every page that uses the content. This means that you can more easily manage a site because a single change could affect hundreds of pages, instead of you needing to manually edit each of those pages.

Database driven websites can provide much more functionality than a static site can. Extended functionality could include:

• Enabling many (potentially non-technical) users to provide content for the website. Users can publish articles on the website without needing to FTP them to a web server.
• Shopping cart
• You can provide advanced search functionality that enables users to filter the results based on a given field. They can then sort those results by a field - say "Price" or "Date".
• Customized homepage
• You can allow your users to perform tasks such as registering for a newsletter, post questions to your forums, provide comments on a blog, update their profile, etc.
• Integration with corporate applications such as CRM systems, HR systems etc

 There are many more functions that can be created and used in a Database Driven Web Application, but these are some that really stand out in our projects. 

Discussion forums and blogs have become a popular feature for many websites. Most, if not all, forums and blogs are database driven. Users can register their details, then add content. When the user clicks the "Submit" button, their details/content is inserted into the database. Then when someone decides to view this content, it is read from the database using SQL (Structured Query Language)

Some websites have a combination of static content and dynamic content. There could be any number of reasons for this. Often, smaller websites will be static. There's little need to configure a database just to store a handful of webpages - much easier and cheaper to keep them as files on the server. Even websites like this might contain some added functionality such as a discussion forum, or a blog. In this case, the discussion forum or blog will need its content stored in a database.

At Dolphin Networks we believe in making things easy for you. That’s why we recommend using a Data Driven Application. We can set this up for you, train you on editing the content and get your new site live within a month- get in touch today here