[Web4lib] loading database descriptions into web page

[Christopher Barr]

In response to Cathy:

I would note that "Dynamic" is NOT a marketing tool. Dynamic simply refers to pages that are built with "server side scripting".

HTML, DHTML, javascript, and CSS are NOT server side... they are client side and are processed by the web browser. For example if you turn JavaScript off on your browser, it is a client side change, and you won't see any functionality the requires it in your browser. On the other hand PHP, Perl, ASP, and ColdFusion are all server side languages. They process commands and return HTML to the browser. It happens something like this:

With a normal page: Client requests page.html, page.html is sent to persons browser, the browser processes html, css, and javascript and displays results.

With a dynamic page: Client request page.php, server processes php commands, php might query the database or include another file, results of query are sent back to php, php script into html, html is sent to browser, browser processes html, css, and javascript and displays results.

Hope that makes sense.

(And for what Sandra wants it is not really the job of the database providers. She wants to create her own searchable/sortable database of databases.)


Best,
Chris Barr
Villanova University


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of cathy alberts
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2007 12:32 PM
To: Sandra Cahillane
Cc: Web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] loading database descriptions into web page

Sandra,

  You might want to contact UMass Amherst or contact the vendors since they are more direct and the one has what you want to implement.

  The concept "dynamic" is a marketing tool.  When You hear or see the acronyms DHTML it is compromised of HTML, CSS, and javascript it is the server side.

  Cathy

  Sandra Cahillane <scahilla at baypath.edu> wrote:

Hello again,

Thank you all for your support. I really don't know how I've gotten along
without you.

Here is my latest dilemma. I have someone capable of writing me a script
that would load database descriptions into a web page for me similar to
what they have at UMass Amherst
(http://www.library.umass.edu/cgi-bin/aka/databases.cgi?command=viewdesc&id=5e413c58e05b0c653b4c01b7f85cb881).
That is, you click on an info button on my alpha list of databases and a
separate page with a description of one specific database is populated.
The problem is, I have no idea how to create the link that would pull the
info from the database description pages, I'm assuming that part would be
fairly simple though. Nor do I know how to format the description page so
it would work with the script. The person I am working with said to create
a "dynamic" HTML page, but I'm not sure what that means. These days, I
though they were all dynamic.

Do I need to create individual pages for each database description? Or is
their a way to create a page with all the database descriptions and have
the appropriate data pulled depending on which database you wanted info on?

Does anyone have pages/examples/sites they can share with me that I could
work from?

Thanks in advance,
Sandy

Sandy Cahillane
Systems and Reference Librarian
Bay Path College
Hatch Library
588 Longmeadow Street
Longmeadow, MA 01106
(413) 567-4529 or (413) 565-1376
fax-(413) 567-8345

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Cathy Alberts

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