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Should Your Web Pages Be Data Base Driven?
Any organization that has a Website or plans to launch one must
make fundamental choices about how its Web pages are created for
visitors. One choice is to decide whether most or all of the site
will be fixed -- the content exists in html -- or generated moment
by moment by one or more databases.
Making the right choice regarding whether to connect a database
to your organization's Website can make a huge difference in
functionality and cost. When deciding whether to go with static
or database-driven pages, here are some questions to ask. Is the
information on your Website likely to change frequently? Do you
have one or more databases that potentially offer valuable information
to Website visitors? Can you share that database, or a version
of it, with site visitors? Do you want people to be able to perform
automated searches for the information they need? Can a copy of
that database be used on a Web server? Is the data complex or
extensive? If your answer to many of these questions is "yes,"
then it may be that you'll want to use database(s) to generate
Web pages.
Here are some examples of databases that have provided provide
great value and ROI to the organizations who utilized them on
their Websites: products for sale, job openings, classes offered,
physicians included in a health plan and drugs covered by a health
plan. This last item -- drugs covered -- is called a formulary.
If you've ever gone to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription,
you'll be able to see the value of putting a formulary online.
Currently, not all health plans have their formularies online.
Physicians wanting to know whether a particular drug is covered
would have to call in and ask or just write a prescription and
hope the patient doesn't report back that the particular drug
isn't covered, or only the generic version is. Then another prescription
has to be written, and the patient has to wait some more.
On the other hand, when an HMO puts its formulary on a Website,
and makes that database easily searchable, physicians can have
a staff member get online and look up what is covered under a
particular health plan. Physicians benefit because they save time
by writing a covered prescription the first time and by making
it easier for their patients to get the medicine they need. The
members or prospective members of the HMO benefits because they
can go online and see what drugs are covered under their plan.
As you can imagine, an HMO's formulary can have thousands of
drugs in it. Moreover, the formulary changes all the time, as
new drugs are added and old ones deleted. Thus a copy of the HMO's
formulary database would be used to generate Web pages. The HMO
concentrates its resources on maintaining an accurate database,
and the Website formulary is accurate as well.
If, on the other hand, the HMO launched plain html pages listing
covered drugs, then the database would still have to be maintained
and the html pages would have to be edited frequently in order
to remain accurate. In addition, the html pages would not produce
the kind of handy search results that a database search would
offer.
Using a database on a Web server does have its disadvantages,
however. First, you have to have or create a database. Second,
it must be accurate. Third, it must be current. Fourth, integrating
that database into a Website takes more time and is typically
more costly, up front, than just building plain html Web pages.
Plugging databases into a Web server involve other issues you'll
want to consider. These include how the Website will access the
database, what kind of database you'll be using and what that
means about what kind of Web server platform you'll want to choose.
The more answers you get up front, the greater return you'll get
on your Website investment.
This article first appeared as a column written
by Dave Tedlock, NetOutcomes' president, for the Inside Tucson
Business and/or the New Mexico Business Weekly.
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