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What is a database? A database is, to put it in the most general terms, simply a collection of data. The "data" can be any kind of information, such as employee names, movie titles, cake recipes, etc. "Collection" means a set of similar data, such as a list of employee names, a book of recipes, and so forth. A list of music CDs is a kind of database, while a tuna fish sandwich and the state of Nevada are not, because those two items are neither data nor similar (except possibly in metaphorical terms). In computer terms, a database is a file (or a set of files) that contains one or more collections of data that is organized in various useful ways. A database stores each collection of similar data in a table. A music lover's database, for example, might have one table that contains information about every CD in her collection, another table that contains information a list of her favorite artists and songs, and so forth. Inside a table, the information about a single entity (a music CD, for example) is stored in a record. The record might contain such data as the CD's title, the artist's name, the title of each song, the length of each song, the total length, etc. Records are arranged by fields (also called columns, by analogy with spreadsheet tables). Each field in a record contains one piece of data, such as the CD title. Below is an example database table containing information about
a music CD collection.
What is a database-enabled Web document? A database-enabled (or database-driven, to use another popular term) Web document is a Web document in which some or all of the content comes from a database. The benefit of getting content from a database is that when the data in the database changes, the Web document also changes, automatically. In an ordinary (non-database-enabled) Web document, you provide all the content when you create the document. If you want to update the content, you have to open the document in your favorite HTML authoring tool (Namo WebEditor) and edit it by hand. Say you have a Web page that contains a list of all your music CDs, and you also have a Microsoft Access database that contains information about your CD collection. When you add a CD to your collection, if your Web document is an ordinary one, not only do you have to add the new CD info to your CD database, you also have to edit the Web document to insert the CD info there. But if your Web document is database-enabled, the Web page updates automatically when you update the database, saving your time and effort. The advantage is even clearer if you imagine a large online shopping site containing hundreds or thousands of pages with all kinds of frequently-changing data: product names, prices, stock status, and the like. If you had to update all those documents by hand whenever changes were made to the catalog.... But the online merchant undoubtedly has all that information in a database anyway, so it makes sense to get the content of the Web pages from the database. To create a database-enabled Web document, instead of manually entering information into the document, you basically put some instructions into the document that tell the Web server that "serves" the document where to look for the information in a database. This usually involves putting some JavaScript code into the document's HTML source. Fortunately, you don't have to write any code to create a database-enabled document, because Namo WebEditor's Database Wizard generates the code for you, after walking you through the process of selecting the database, selecting the parts of the database you want in your document, and deciding how to present the information to your Web site visitors. How do I use the Database Wizard? Below are the basic steps in using the Database Wizard. Don't worry if some of the terms in this brief overview are unfamiliar. For more information, use the links at the bottom of this page. Create
a new document, or open an existing one. Decide
how you want to present the database information in the document. The wizard
can create: a table that shows multiple records, one record per row, with each column a field; a view that shows multiple records in a list, with each field on its own line; a view that shows a single record; a chart that shows values from multiple records in a visual form; a form that lets your site visitors enter new records; or a form that lets your site visitors modify existing records. Select
the command in the Database
submenu of the Insert menu
corresponding to the kind of database view you want to have. This will launch
the Database Wizard. Specify
the dynamic document format (ASP or PHP) and the database connection method
to use Select
a data source (your database) and supply your username and password, if
any, to access the database Select
the database tables and fields to use in the document Specify a few options specific to the particular database view that you selected This document is created using Namo WebEditor 4 on August 2, 2000.
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