DATABASE SYSTEMS AND THE WEB - Database Design and Development: An Essential Guide for IT Professionals - page 597

type of commercial activity was strictly forbidden on the Internet. Now the Web is
where you go to shop for thousands of products and services. There are also many
special interest business sites.
Every airline, every bank, every auction house, every computer vendor, every
car dealer, every database company—the list goes on and on—has its presence
on the Web. Think of all the companies in the entertainment business, all those in
the travel business—these alone can fill up page after page when you search for
them.
How do these companies operate their businesses? How do you look for prices?
When you place an order and make a payment, where are the details of your order
stored? What is behind all of the commercial activity on the Web? Databases form
the underlying foundation for electronic commerce. Database and Web technolo-
gies must mesh together to make electronic commerce possible. Let us now examine
this integration of the two technologies.
Motivation for Integration
Imagine that you wish to shop for topics on French cooking on the Internet. You
browse the various sites and find an electronic bookstore that has a wide selection
of topics on that topic. You ask for a list of topics. You narrow down your choice
to three topics. You want to look at what the reviewers have said about these topics.
You check the prices and any available discounts. You add them to your electronic
shopping cart. You indicate your preferred method of shipping. The website adds
shipping charge and sales tax, completes the calculations, and displays the total
amount due. You pay with your credit card. The transaction is complete; you have
placed your order.
How does the transaction get processed? When the website displays the list of
topics on French cooking, from where does it get the data? When the site shows
you the prices and shipping charges, from where does it display this data? When you
finish your order, where do the details of your order get stored? That merchant's
database.
It makes the greatest sense to take the information stored in an organization's
database and selectively allow access to the information to those visiting its website
on the Internet, intranet, or extranet. Here are a few obvious but compelling reasons
for integration of an organization's database with its website:
• Fixed or static Web documents do not allow customized information display.
Every time data are updated, the static document becomes outdated.
• Trying to reenter data stored in an organization's database on HTML docu-
ments constitutes an enormous waste of time.
• The database can be used to create web pages to reflect the current data values.
• Customers and internal users can get up-to-date information from the
database.
• Business partners can receive up-to-date information on product data such as
prices and availability directly from the database.
• Order entry and fulfillment transactions can interact directly with the database.
The older method of buying products on the Web required taking an order on