Publishing Dynamic Data; Database Basics - MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION 4.5-DEVELOPING WEB Develop Manual

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Publishing Dynamic Data

A Web application page is different from a static Web page because it can publish data
dynamically. This can involve querying databases, connecting to LDAP or mail servers,
and leveraging COM, DCOM, CORBA, or Java objects to retrieve, update, insert, and
delete data at runtime — as your users interact with pages in their browsers.
For ColdFusion developers, the term "data source" can refer to a number of different
types of structured content accessible locally or across a network. You can query Web
sites, LDAP servers, POP mail servers, and documents in a variety of formats.
Most commonly though, a database will drive your applications, and for this
discussion a data source is defined as the entry point for database operations.
During this chapter, you will build a query to retrieve data from
Access database. In subsequent chapters in this book, you will insert and update data
in this database.
To build a query, you will need to use:
ColdFusion data sources
The CFQUERY tag
SQL commands

Database Basics

You don't need a thorough knowledge of databases to develop a data-driven
ColdFusion application, but you will need to learn some basic concepts and
techniques.
A database is a structure for storing information. Databases are organized in tables,
which are collections of related items. For example, a table might contain the names,
street addresses, and phone numbers of individuals. Think of a table as a grid of
columns and rows. In this case, one column contains names, a second column
contains street addresses, and the third column contains phone numbers. Each row
constitutes one data record because the data in that row applies to a unique item, in
this case, one individual. Rows are also referred to as records. Columns are also
referred to as fields.
Developing Web Applications with ColdFusion
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