Labeling a site style as 'dynamic' is purely a marketing term. However it has grown to mean sites and web pages that are built 'on the fly' by a database, rather than individually created by a person. This means that instead of having hundreds of individual HTML pages in your website (one for each product, for example) you might have only a handful of pages that have the ability to dynamically display hundreds or even thousands of different product or data pages.

The image below is an example of an online pet store layout. Here you can see the difference in the number of physical pages required to operate & maintain a standard HTML site versus a dynamic site.

Looking at the image above we see that we need 4 separate pages to display the different variety of pets available at our online store on a standard HTML website. Using a database allows us to simplify this greatly. Rather than typing the information and links on 4 separate pages, we can use just one page to display the same 4 groups and retain the same amount of uniqueness per page. This also allows us to store our information in one central place for easy updating and maintenance.

Below is a simple example of how the data for pets.asp and pets_detail.asp is stored in a database. All of the basic information for each main category, and each subcategory, is stored in a table . We use the column values, "PetID" and "PetDetailID," to retrieve specific information from the table.

From the home page (home.asp), clicking a link to "Dogs" would bring us to www.yourdomain.com/pets.asp?PetID=1. The page would display the information and images relating to dogs.
Clicking a link to "Kittens" would bring us to www.yourdomain.com/pets.asp?PetID=4. The page would now display the information and images relating to kittens.

So one dynamic page, pets.asp, is able to accomplish the same task as 4 similar HTML pages. While this might not be critical on a site like this with only 4 sections, the ability to store information in a central, easily updated location becomes vital the larger the site is. And as small businesses grow the site can easily grow with them, rather than needing constant, costly page revisions.

Fissure Multimedia uses a combination of ASP & Visual Basic to develop database-driven sites. We rely on these languages due to their proven performance in the current market. This is not to say that the other current programming languages are inferior. When a developer chooses one of these advanced languages to use for a site, he or she usually makes this choice by considering: a. how comfortable and knowledgeable he or she is with that language and b. what target server platform and end user capabilities the web site needs.

Fissure Multimedia hosts with and relies on Microsoft Windows server platforms, so we rely on Microsoft-developed languages and databases to ensure compatibility.

Check back soon for Dynamic Sites Part II: Converting an existing HTML site to a dynamic ASP site.

Jason Benson, Fissure Multimedia
jason@fissuremedia.com