Data Driven Website Applications

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Tutorial

Web pages or portions of Web pages can be created from data stored on the Web server. Typical applications include Newsletters, Calendar of Events, Real Estate Listings, Photo Galleries, Online Stores, Site Maps, Search Results, Charts and Graphs.

The primary advantage of a data driven application is that data can be separated from the display of the information and independently maintained. The maintenance process typically takes one of three forms:

• data maintained on a local computer is uploaded to the Web server;
• specially designed update Web pages permit storage of the data on the Web server; or,
• a content management system such as Typo3 is used for capturing data displayed via a template.

For example, you can update comments below via the Maintain Your Comments Web page. The login name is "guest" the login password is "password". Try out the HTML commands noted on this maintenance page. Don't worry about changing your comments back to the original comments below, since this will take place automatically several times a day (or when someone else changes it). When you return to this page after entering your comments, you may have to Refresh this page to see the changes.

YOUR COMMENTS

Default Comments

A very similar maintenance Web page, Maintain My Marquee, can be used to maintain the marquee below. The login name is "guest". The login password is "password". The marquee is reset to its default values several times a day. You may have to Refresh this page to see your changes.

MY MARQUEE

The Maintain Job Openings Web page will allow you to add, delete and edit the job openings shown below. The login name is "guest". The login password is "password". Job Openings will return to default values several times a day. You may have to Refresh this page to see changes.

JOB OPENINGS

Job Title	Hours per Week	Shift	Qualifications
CEO	40	8am - 5pm	MBA + 10 years experience
Mail Clerk	20	8am - 12pm	High school graduate

Antique Ice Wagon Figurine Antique Ice Wagon Figurine Antique Clothes Wringer Antique Clothes Iron Antique Phone Antique Bowls Antique Stove Antique Canteen Antique Colander Antique Beaters

Photos present a special data driven Web page challenge because the photos must be optimized for Web page display: i.e. the photo files need to be small enough to download and display within a reasonable time. Note that this is an especially important factor for Internet analog modem users. For example, the photo files produced by a high resolution digital camera can be huge and can take hours to download (or upload) via a dial-up modem. Unless appropriately sized and compressed, these photo files are typically too large for practical use on Web pages.

Although photo editing software can be a solution, in many cases it's much simpler to automatically re-size and compress the photo at the server when it's uploaded. The Maintain Photo Gallery Web page allows maintenance of a database that contains photos and automatically re-sizes photos and compresses the files. Note that JPG photos can be added, deleted and replaced along with the typical add, delete and modification capabilities for text. You may have to Refresh this display page after submitting an update.

The tutorial displays we've shown on this page are all simple displays. It's important to remember that the displayed data originates from a database and can be displayed in many different ways. For example, the photo gallery display to the right could have been displayed with multiple images per page (see multiple image photo gallery example).

The Typo3 CMS (Content Management System) will also automatically optimize graphics, but a little differently. The graphic is uploaded and stored on the server without modification. When a graphic is chosen for display on a Web page, then an automatically resized and compressed copy of the graphic is created and stored on the server and this is the graphic used when the Web page is opened.

• Newsletters
  • The River House, Inc. Newsletter links were generated from a database.
• Calendar of Events
• The Grayling Township Events page is generated from a database. Past events are not displayed. Events are sorted by date and time.
• Real Estate Listings
• Example real estate listing display - Try the update process.
• Lynch-Goebel Gaylord Michigan Real Estate - offers a search form that allows property selections by type, location, minimum number of bedrooms, and maximum price. The real estate agents are able to maintain their own property type and location options. On the search results page, note the drop down list for selected properties, the ability to view multiple photos and the form for requesting more information about a property. The search results page displays very quickly because only one property is shown at a time and only one photo for the property is shown at a time. The upload process for photos automatically optimizes the photos for efficient display. Note that the MLS search and display functions on this website are maintained by the realtor's multi-listing service and not by EPCS.
• In addition to the features available on the Lynch-Goebel Gaylord Michigan Real Estate site, the Pinckney Michigan Real Estate site has an opt-in / opt-out process for real estate newsletter subscriptions and will automatically generate a weekly newsletter that shows status changes for listings and open houses. This site has a Sponsored Link section that automatically cross-links real estate sites maintained by EPCS. This cross-linking should improve search engine ranking for all sites included in this process. The Pinckney Michigan Real Estate site is maintained by the realtor via the Typo3 content management system and software developed by EPCS.
• Online Store
• Lous Unlimited,Inc. sells VW dune buggy parts online and in their St. Helen, Michigan store. This online store utilizes a complex database maintained via software (Miva Merchant) licensed by Miva Corporation. EPCS will install Miva Merchant, maintain the updates, research applicability of the many third party enhancements available for the application and install these enhancements. Lous Unlimited, Inc. is a successful online store primarily because the business already knew the ins and outs of selling VW dune buggy parts in their brick and mortar store and because they were willing to invest the time necessary to populate and maintain product data in the online database. Their pricing is competitive, which helps any business, but is especially important for online sales. The site also does well on search engines, not because of any gimmicks programmed into the site but because the product descriptions maintained by Lous Unlimited, Inc. contain the phrases people may use to search for the product via search engines.
• River House Inc. is a nonprofit agency that serves victims and survivors of homelessness, domestic abuse and sexual violence in four northern Michigan counties. They require donations to operate. They request funding support on their website and provide a means for people to use their credit card for making donations. In effect, they're running a small online store. Since they have very few store "products", in this case a small number of different donation funds, it's easily and inexpensively mangeable via a single Web page with PayPal processed online donation transactions.
• Site Maps
  • Site Map pages can be generated automatically from PHP, PDF and HTML files stored on the Web server.
• Search Results
  • Search results pages can be generated from indexed data extracted from PHP, PDF and HTML Web pages stored on the server. Typically this is a two step process. These Web page files are indexed daily and the results of the analysis is stored in a database. The database is then used by the website's search function to find the indexed Web pages.
• Charts and Graphs
  • The spam graph shown on the EPCS Spam Filtering page was generated from EPCS e-mail server logs. Histograms, pie charts and similar graphics can be generated from data files stored on the server.

The typical database update process is via Web pages developed by EPCS. In some cases the data is uploaded as a file generated by other software programs, examples: PDF file generated via a Word document with the Adobe Acrobat plug-in; or, delimited ASCII files exported from Excel, Access or other programs.

EPCS uses Linux based servers exclusively for Web server based applications. The choice was made because of the excellent reliability of Linux based servers, their excellent performance, their excellent security options and the wide range of reliable and efficient software available for Web applications.

JavaScript is used in Web pages for processing functions best executed by the Web browser.

The Dynamic Hypertext Markup Language (DHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) languages are used to format the information displayed by the Web browser.

PERL, Practical Extraction and Report Language, is a computer language first used in 1987. It is the first of the widely used open source languages for processing data captured via Web page forms and the first of the server based computer languages routinely used by EPCS. There are many open source utilities available that are written in PERL, to include the utilities EPCS uses for generating both formatted and unformatted e-mail messages from data captured via Web pages. Although containing many aspects of the universal C++ language, it is not as C++ compliant as PHP and does not handle database maintenance and usage as easily as PHP. For more on PERL, see www.perl.org.

PHP, Hypertext Preprocessor, is EPCS' computer language of choice for custom Web server based applications. Although similar to PERL, it is more C++ compliant. C++ compliance is important, since nearly every college, community college and some high schools offer C++ programming classes, thus making it easier to find programmers in northern Michigan who can program PHP applications. PHP interfaces easily with server based data formats, particularly the open source MySQL relational database. For more on PHP, see www.php.net. For more on MySQL, see www.mysql.org.

MySQL is an open source relational database system that runs on the Web server. The system allows storage of simple as well as very complex database structures plus very efficient retrieval of data. MySQL interfaces very well with PHP.

Visual BASIC®, is a proprietary Microsoft® language. EPCS uses Visual Basic for applications that run on customers' Microsoft Windows® computers. Typically Visual Basic will be used for automatically generating Web pages from a customer maintained ODBC compliant database. A script is typically provided by EPCS that will both run the Visual Basic program that generates Web pages and automatically upload these pages to the Web server via an FTP program. For more on Visual BASIC, see msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/.

Miva Merchant is used for online store applications. Miva Merchant isn't a programming language but setup and use of the software requires study and time.

Typo3 is a very popular Web server based website content management system in Europe; it's gaining popularity in the U.S. Typo3 uses a custom designed template that controls where end user authored Web page components are placed on pages and who is allowed to update what on a website. Typo3 is "extensible" and contains hundreds of extensions that implement Web based applications such as graphic management and optimization, calendars, e-commerce applications, automatic menu maintenance and many more applications. Division of labor and skills becomes possible since the software allows separation of design, programming and content development functions, where the design may be done by a graphic artist, the programming by EPCS staff and page content development by office staff within the customer's organization. The www.DavisCPA.com, www.Sagasser-Associates.com, and www.Pinckney-Michigan-Real-Estate.com, www.H-Htube.com, www.FarmHouseMusic.org, and www.TheFriendshipShelter.org websites are maintained by these organizations' office staff with Typo3.