Database Reference
In-Depth Information
a form, sending the form by e-mail to a person in the organization, and that
person keying in the data into the database through a separate application.
Requisites for Integration
How can Web-database integration be brought about? How can the Web be made
a platform to provide users with interfaces into the database? Naturally, database
vendors are working on proprietary solutions, but organizations are looking for
generic solutions without restricting themselves to single-vendor options.
Review the following list of requisites of organizations for integrating their data-
bases with their Web presence.
•
Overcome the stateless nature of a Web transaction and provide continuous
sessions for users to interact with the database.
•
Provide secure access to the database.
•
Allow session-based and application-based authentication of users.
•
Protect the database from a transaction destroying the database updates made
by another concurrent transaction over the Internet.
•
Provide connectivity to the database, independent of the DBMS.
•
Provide connectivity to the database, independent of proprietary Web browsers
or servers.
•
Offer a solution that utilizes all the standard features of DBMSs.
•
Present an open architecture for the database system to be operable by a
variety of technologies.
•
Provide an interface to the database that is scalable as the volume of Web trans-
actions rises.
•
Enable access to the database guaranteeing acceptable performance.
•
Offer the ability to administer the interface efficiently in a cost-effective
manner.
•
Allow the interface to work with productivity tools.
Architecture for Integration
Think of a simple database query. A customer picks a product sold over the Inter-
net and wants to know the price. At one end is the browser, where the customer is
establishing contact with the website. At the other end is the company's database,
where the price for the selected product is stored. Make the connection between
the browser at one end and the database server at the other end.
The browser and the Web server exchange information over the Internet with
HTTP. The server transmits a form to the browser, and the user selects a product
on the form and indicates a request for the price. The transmission of this request
from the browser to the Web server takes place. What must the next link be in the
communication chain?
For the request to be fulfilled by the DBMS, it must be translated from HTML
into SQL for relational databases. The request in SQL must be transmitted to the
DBMS at the database server to retrieve the price for the product, possibly from the
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