Internet - The World Wide Web
Databases

Databases

A database is simply a place where information is stored. You probably have a database or two in your house without realizing it. A recipe box is a database. All your recipes are stored in a unique order where you can access them quickly and easily. Your telephone/address book is another database. All the people you contact from your grandmother right down to the pizza parlor are stored in a way where you can easily find the information you need.

The real power of the Internet lies in the user’s ability to access huge amounts of information. If they are designed well, databases provide immediate access to the precise information you require. Whether it is a database of historical baseball statistics, the compact disc inventory of a major music retailer, or the price history of the New York Stock Exchange, databases have the ability to present and sort through huge quantities of information.

Doing business online usually requires a database of some sort, whether you are tracking products, customers, or even Web usage. There are several steps you will need to go through to integrate a database into your Web site. The first step is choosing the right technology combination of hardware and software. After you have chosen the platform the real work begins.

The second step involves the design of the database. The key to databases is that they are designed well. After all, your telephone/address book would not be terribly useful if you could not find the number of the person you wanted. Quality database design is crucial to maximizing the speed and extending its ability.

On the top level, databases are organized into something called data tables. There can be many data tables in a single database. If you think of a database as a spreadsheet with rows and columns, you are really thinking of a data table. Each data table has records (the subject about which you are keeping information) and fields (the categories of information about the record). If you use our telephone/address book example, then Pizza Galore would be a record; the address, phone number, price of a large pie, and delivery boy’s name would all be fields within that record.

The first goal of good database design is to eliminate duplication of any information in any of the data tables. Another goal is to create such well-organized and logical data tables that another developer could pick up the database and understand exactly how it was developed and how it can be modified in the future.

There are two main types of databases that you can employ on your Web site: relational database or a flat database. Relational databases are much faster at handling huge amounts of information, such as a database with millions of records. SQL (structured query language) databases adhere to a standard for creating database queries and are produced by many different software companies. When moving information from one database to another, the issue of whether each database is ODBC (open database conductivity) compliant arises. Most databases in use today are ODBC compliant.

* Source - Everything Online Business Book
              Get Your Business On the Web!
              Use the Internet to build your business