Web Databases
© 1998 Stephen
Haberman
Ever wonder how sites like http://home.microsoft.com
or http://www.amazon.com maintain their custom user
pages? Or how search engines like http://www.yahoo.com
work? They all use varying techniques, but are all based on databases.
Databases are simply files used for storing huge amounts of data
(some databases are well over 10 gigabytes) in a fashion that is easy to store, sort, and
retrieve information. One of the most popular database programs is Microsoft Access.
Others include Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server. Nearly any type of database can be linked
to the web.
Once a database is linked to the web, site developers can use it
for anything, ranging from storing financial records to user preferences to product
information. The advantage of using a database is that pages are dynamic. This means that
the same HTML file can look drastically different, depending on the user who views it.
This is helpful for searches and custom user pages.
For example, Microsoft's Internet Start page custom-builds itself
based on the individual user. When you visit the site, their server gets your User ID from
a cookie, goes to the database, returns all the information on what colors you like and
other preferences, then custom-builds the HTML page for your viewing.
A database also offers site builders an easy way to maintain a
site. For example, if you maintain a page with several thousand links and you add or
remove several links a day, it is much easier to use a database to add or remove data from
the page than to open the page manually. The server can, then, automatically update the
page.
The disadvantage to database-driven sites is that they take up a
lot of server CPU time. Even the fastest computers on the market can easily be reduced to
horrid speeds when running an Internet database. To illustrate, the Microsoft Internet
Start page (mentioned earlier) runs on at least ten different computers; whereas most
sites on the Internet with plain HTML pages use one or two computers. Chase 3000 and
Sodbuster, along with several other web sites, are hosted on a single computer in North
Platte.
In conclusion, databases on the web offer site builders an
opportunity to make their site both fun and functional -- but always at a cost.
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