Many useful Web applications provide a web page interface to a commercial product database of information. |
This is currently done through CGI scripting. |
The database must have a programmable interface (in addition to an interactive interface). For relational databases, this has been standardized in the query language SQL. |
Web queries to the database are taken from an HTML form, the information is passed to the CGI script, which makes appropriate SQL queries to the database. The results of the database query can be formatted and returned to the web page. |
From Introduction to the World Wide Web and Web Technologies presentation: Introduction to the www and Web Technologies -- Fall Semester 96. by Nancy McCracken-Foils prepared December 9 1996