Building Database-Driven Sites With Drumbeat 2.0
By Scott R. Garrigus
Database-driven Web site development usually entails a large amount of low-level programming and knowledge of a number of different technologies-ASP, CGI, ODBC, and SQL, to name a few. This leaves many Webmasters having to spend more time learning rather than developing. Fortunately, some of today's development tools have advanced to the point where database chores can be handled in a visual environment, eliminating the need for low-level coding tasks. As a nonprogrammer interested in creating sites that take advantage of dynamic data-driven Web pages, along with the latest 4.0 browser technology, this is particularly important to me.
Because of the popularity of Active Server Pages (ASP) and its wide availability on Web hosting services these days, Elemental Software decided to support this Microsoft technology in its
Drumbeat software.
PC Product Reviews Magazine
The project in my example is an online magazine, PC Product Reviews, which provides a searchable database of product reviews pertaining to the Windows platform. In the past, all reviews were posted by hand, each with its own separate Web page. There was also an index that had to be updated by hand as each new review was added. While it was possible for a visitor to search for reviews manually using the index, there was no way to type in a specific word or phrase to find all matching content.
