Today almost every e-commerce website is integrated with a backend database to keep a record of all the transactions and customers. Database is a fast, easy, secure and reliable method of updating the records online. In fact database is an essential tool for the organizations which are involved into news-making, whether forecasts, networking, e-commerce, placement consultancy and many more. All the valuable information and knowledge base is stored in a database. There are different database softwares which are available in the market such as Oracle, Sybase, mSQL, Illustra, Microsoft SQL, FoxPro, Microsoft Access etc. One can choose any one or more than one keeping in mind his business requirements and budget.
In order to ripe the benefits of online databases, the web pages must be integrated with them in a proper manner. To accomplish this task a lot of database tools are available. There are various methods to integrate a database with the World Wide Web (WWW), popularly known as the internet and every database tool differs from the other with respect to its functions, features and capacity. Therefore the type of tool to be used should be carefully selected keeping in mind the type of database used.
Most popular database integration tools are:
1) PHP/FI: It is a CGI (common gateway interface) program which is developed in C programming language and can be used on any UNX system. You can use PHP to integrate mSQL and Postgres95 with your HTML documents.
2) Cold Fusion: It is an application which allows you to write scripts within your HTML code. It is basically a database interface which efficiently processes a script and then returns the information within the HTML text in that script. It works by processing a form created by the web developer and then sends a request to the web server. The server sends all the information entered by the user in the form to Cold Fusion engine and this way the information is processed, updated and stored. Cold Fusion is a very popular database tool.
3) w3-mSQL: It was created so that the mSQL database can be easily accessed via web pages. It works like a CGI script which reads the HTML code, processes all the queries and sends the final o\result to the web server which in turn redirects it to the end user’s web browser.
4) MsqlPerl: It is used to write the scripts in Perl language in order to access the mSQL database.
5) MsqlJava: Using this you can easily create Java Applets to access mSQL database.
6) WDB: It consists of Perl scripts which can be used to access Sybase, Informix and mSQL databases.
7) Web/Genera: This one is used to integrate Sysbase databases with the HTML documents.
MORE (Multimedia Oriented Repository Environment): It refers to those application programs that operate with a web server with an aim to provide access to the relational database systems (RDBMS).
Apart from these there are numerous other database tools which can be used with HTML and DHTML documents such as DBI, DBGateway, MS Visual InterDev etc. All of them come with different price tags and capacities. You can choose the one which matches with your requirements.