Linking Web Databases With Cold Fusion
By Leon Chalnick
Many new tools are now available for building dynamic Web sites from databases, enabling database developers to easily incorporate database functions like adds, updates, deletes, queries and reports into sites. Such tools include Allaire's
Cold Fusion, StormCloud Development's WebDBC, Borland's IntraBuilder, EveryWare's Tango, and Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP). Most of these products work in conjunction with an HTTP server, making them operating-system specific. As Java comes to the fore, however, we'll see products based upon the Java database-connectivity interface (JDBC), officially introduced with the most recent version of the Java Development Kit (JDK), and platforms will no longer be an issue. (See "
Online".)
Name that Tune
Let's take a look at an example where it makes sense to build a Web site from a database. MondoMIDI, a fictitious music-publishing company, wants to put its print catalog of songs produced in the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) file format on the Web. Building the site using static HTML pages would make the frequently changing catalog difficult to maintain. Web sites built from databases, on the other hand, are dynamic : Individual pages containing the current set of data found in the database are produced on the fly.
