DATABASE SYSTEMS AND THE WEB - Database Design and Development: An Essential Guide for IT Professionals - page 613

Web
Browser

HTTP
request

Web
page

INTERNET or
INTRANET

Data-
bases

CF
Applications
Server

File
Systems
Direc-
tories
Servers

Cold
Fusion
page

Web
Server

E-mail

Web
page

Figure 19-11 How ColdFusion works.

Active Server Pages The Active Server Platform is Microsoft's response to
server-side application development. You can develop on the server side with
HTML, scripts, and software modules such as Java applets and ActiveX server com-
ponents. Several Microsoft server technologies, including Transaction Server and
Proxy Server, are available to implement applications.
You can develop Active Server Pages (ASP) with the same set of components
used for client-side scripting. This means that you can combine Java applets and
Active Server components within your ASP script using scripting languages such as
JavaScript, Jscript, or VBScript.
Browser Capabilities Component (BCC) and Active Data Object (ADO) are two
important precreated and tested components that are used widely. With BCC you
can detect the type of browser and create the kind of HTML pages the browser can
handle. ADO, a more useful component, works with your server-side scripts and
enables you to access databases and embed the query results in a dynamic web page.
The following indicates the sequence of actions:

Server-side Active Server Page script communicates an SQL query to ADO.
ADO passes query to database server.
Database server processes query.
Database server sends query results to ADO.
ADO returns query results to the ASP script.
Script uses query results to generate dynamic web page and sends it to browser.

Other Tools Here are few other tools that are also available for Web-database
integration. The names of the tools and the website addresses are indicated below.