Creating Database Update Tools
Building tools using HTML forms
By Mark Baker
Building Web pages from information stored in databases greatly enhances Web-site interactivity. You can create custom views of information to suit users' individual needs and, more importantly, users can contribute to that information, potentially turning your site into a powerful, interactive information source or perhaps a collaborative authoring environment.
HTML forms can gather information from users, but they lack the interactivity of a standard database client. Standard techniqes don't allow you to design a database application with HTML forms the way you would with Visual Basic or PowerBuilder, especially with complex updates to multiple tables of a relational database.
One solution is to use ActiveX or Java to build a conventional database application that can be hosted by the user's browser. But that means mastering these new technologies and subjecting users to the overhead of downloads, upgrades, and the resources they demand. In a corporate environment, you may also need MIS approval for new software. While some tools exist to automate building database-oriented Web applications, they are often expensive and/or platform specific, and they may not work with existing tools.
Fortunately, it is possible to build quite sophisticated database-update utilities with just CGI and HTML forms, provided you take proper advantage of the most fundamental form of interactivity on the Web: that of multiple pages and their links. This article will examine the design and technical challenges of building such a utility.<>
