A database is simply a way to store and organize data. It can be as simple as collecting and storing an email address for a mailing list or a complex customer management system using multiple tables and relational data.
Building a database application to perform a function often reduces the manual labor in performing that task in the future. It can automate many processes that may be time consuming and unreliable to do manually. It requires additional development costs initially, but should provide a fast R.O.I. with time savings. In many cases it's really the only solution to the desired functionality.
The possiblities are really endless with what can be done. Here are a few examples on how a database can be helpful in a website.
A mailing list signup form is placed on your website. When that is submitted the email address is stored as a record in a table within the backend database. It checks for & prevents duplicates. Along with that email address you may want some other data to further target the user, such as if they prefer to receive HTML email or Text email, What Product or Location they are interested in, their location, etc.
Now you have a list building automatically. No need to manually enter all of these into a spreadsheet. We can build an administration page so you can view and edit the list.
Now when it's time to send them a message, we can build a web-based interface to compose a message to a filtered group, and send. If you use a 3rd party messaging we can build a page so you can submit a query with certain criteria and then display the filtered results so you can copy & paste the data into your system.
You want a way for customers to locate a dealer who sells your product. All the dealers or retail locations are stored in a database along with any specific information about them.
The user on the website then selects a few search criteria such as their location and what products they're interested in and they are given the results.
In this example let's say your business runs frequent events of some kind that you want listed on your website. Maybe it's on the road promotional events, a live music schedule, or daily specials.
Rather than manually edit the page(s) that this information will appear on, instead we'll create a database table storing all the details on the event and an administration page to manage the events. The page on the website will dynamically pull the content from the database and display it. Any changes to the data in the database will immediately be reflected on all page on the website where this info appears. It can also be set to only display events that occur within a certain timeframe.
Walnut Hill Design has extensive experience working with and developing web-based database driven applications and web pages. We typically code in PHP using a MySQL database, however .asp is also common.
If your website needs a restricted area protected by a password and individual user accounts then you need a database to handle this.
This is just scratching the surface on types of uses for a database.
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