Online databases

Up until now the traditional way of publishing information onto either an intranet or the Internet has been to create Web pages using an authoring tool. This produces rather static pages that need to be updated regularly to keep the user's attention. The alternative is to link a database to the Internet and allow visitors to your Web site to interrogate the database and view the results. The way of providing value-added benefit to the visitors of your Web site by including data is great for the user and, with the new database publishing tools, is also relatively easy for the company.

The original concept of a Web site was a rather static page in which the Web designer could add graphics to the content and create a complete HTML document. This idea has changed to allow Web designers and companies to use simple tools to create HTML documents from their existing information. For example, the Microsoft Office suite lets you use its standard office applications of word processor, spreadsheet, database and presentation software packages to prepare information. However, Office 97 now includes a new Save As filter to automatically convert any Office information into an HTML document.

Converting your existing information into HTML documents ready for your Web site presents one problem the site is never totally up to date. In many cases, this might not be important and you can upload new HTML documents once or twice a week. However, if you are planning to provide timely...