Web Kool Creations

Database Driven

A database-driven approach to web development simply refers to storing the website content in a database. It involves the separation of the sites' content (text / pictures) from its design structure. When a website visitor requests a page, a script runs and populates the appropriate page with the desired content from the database then displays the populated page as a HTML file to the viewers' screen.

In contrast, a static website is comprised by a sequence of HTML files. These files are self-contained documents which always look the same regardless of where or how the page is being viewed. A static HTML file comprises of all the data for a particular page, including the design and content.

To further demonstrate the advantages of a database driven over static HTML, we use the following example for a website that has 45 product pages. By using the static HTML approach you would require 45 separate HTML pages, each containing details for 1 product on the same layout structure.

To modify a small part of the page would require all of the 45 static HTML product pages to be altered separately. Alternatively using the database driven approach only 1 dynamic product page would be need to be built, as all the content would be stored in a database which links to the dynamic page to display the product details. Where as before if alterations were require you had to change each page individually, by using the database driven approach the changes only need to be made once.

Using the above example, a database driven website would allow viewers to search for products by typing in relevant criteria, data can also be manipulated far better than if using multiple static HTML pages as it allows the database records to be filtered using fixed or user dependant criteria.

Please see our Portfolio for some examples of our work.