Database Web Solutions

This page researched and written by Donna Sanclemente, owner, Point of View

Database web solutions do not have to be complicated or expensive -- all it requires is knowledge of what is available, choosing the appropriate solution for your goals and objectives, and a little effort. The benefits to adding a database solution to your web site far outweigh the time you will need to devote to the project, and more importantly allows you to have a dynamic web site that can change regularly with little work.

Integrating database solutions to a web site offer numerous benefits to both you, the site owner, and your visitors. For site owners, databases are an ideal way to effectively present and manage information -- vast information that is constantly changing -- on your web site. Visitors benefit by being able to find exactly what they're looking for instantaneously without having to scroll through a page or weave their way through a site.

Databases offer flexibility. A database on the web can be searched, edited, deleted, and/or added in one place by both the visitor or the site owner. This provides for an endless amount of possibilities. Let me offer a few situations where a database solution can be useful to you and your visitors.

Situation #1: - POV (a marketing firm, posing as MacWorld's event management company for this demo) wanted to find a solution to present all of MacWorld NY 99's conferences and events in one area. There are almost 100 conferences and events occuring over a four-day period which are divided among the type of conference (User or Pro), day, track, speaker, or event title. In an effort to avoid the three-(or more)-click rule of the static pages on MacWorld's site, POV created one web page which would allow potential show attendees to review the show's events by searching among the different criteria representative of the show's structure.

Solution: POV used James Sentman's shareware "Tabs on the Web" (TOTW) -- a Mac-only CGI -- to serve the information on a web search page. TOTW is a "quick and easy" solution that doesn't necessarily require programming capabilities -- just knowledge of HTML and forms. The event list was compiled in a database application (a spreadsheet could be used as well) and exported in a tab-delimited format. Fields from the tab-delimited file were matched to the TOTW application which scans the information and creates a database. TOTW includes templates of the various web pages (search page, administration page, welcome page, etc.) which you tweak for graphic presentation, and edit to in order for the fields on the HTML pages to match the TOTW database. Simple, effective, and cheap! (see chart below)

For POV's customized solution: http://www.sentman.com/tabsdemo/macworld.acgi

Situation #2: Acme Wood Floors (a fictitious company) has 115 distributors across the United States. These distributors are the direct contact between a potential customer and Acme's products. Acme's customers include general contractors, architects, and interior designers who need to find an Acme Wood Floor distributor in a specific geographic area for their clients. A visit to Acme's web site offers the opportunity for their potential customer to search Acme's database of distributors by city or state (among other criteria). Without a database solution, a visitor would have to scan through 115 entries to find the information as seen here -- 95 percent of which is irrelevant. A database solution allows a visitor to quickly narrow down and zero in on relevant information they needed (usually yesterday) and obtain a more detailed account of information which would be impossible to display on a single static web page.

Solution: FMPro built in Web Companion (free if you own already own FileMaker Pro)

For POV's customized solution: (insert URL)

Situation #3: The New York State Psychiatric Association (NYSPA) has 5,500 member psychiatrists across the state of New York, each of whom specialize in a variety of different mental health disorders and treatments and are involved in any number of four dozen health care insurance plans. NYSPA's goal was to give visitors the opportunity to choose a psychiatrist who concentrates in a particular area (such as Eating Disorders or Schizophrenia to name two examples) as well as find a match to an insurance plan. Because of the complicated makeup of the database and NYSPA's desire to offer a voluminous amount of criteria to select from, a more powerful solution needed to be used in order to meet NYSPA's goals and objectives.

Solution: FileMakerPro and Lasso. FileMaker Pro was used to convert NYSPA's existing membership database and then customized to reflect the "speciality" information gleaned from those members who volunteered to join the Online Referral Service. Lasso was chosen over FMPro's built in web publishing solution(s) because of Lasso's extended capabilities not available with FMPro's built in solutions.

For POV's customized solution: http://nyspsych.org/referral/index.html