Create a simple form to generate data for your table

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OK, as we said before one way of getting some data to play with is to create a form to populate the database. Create an asp page (example form.asp) that has a form that looks something like this.

You then edit the form properties to publish to database. FrontPage should create the "connection string" (your link to the database) and create an Access2000 database within the web, usually in the fpdb folder. If you are using SQL server you have to set up a local database connection on your computer, enter the IP, login and pass - if you authenticate once you should see your database on the server.

Now I need to create a page to "parse" or display the data I have submitted to my form. Using FrontPage2000 I create a page named display.asp to show the search results - my dynamic content. I use one page for all results; everything I see depends on the information requested.

This is a quick example of the type of database region I would insert on my display.asp page: (yes, we explain how to make the picture and links here and a little later....)

Database Results Area

Name
Email	Link

Database Results Area

Close your pages ( form.asp, display.asp ), saving your changes, publish.

Then go to your page, www.mydomain/form.asp and enter some data in your newly created form. Here are 2 sample entries we could have made:

ID	Pass	name	email	photo	link
123	123	John	jdoe@aa.com	http://www.mydomain.com/john.jpg	http://www.aa.com
456	987	ASPgod	janice@bb.com	http://www.mydomain.com/janice.jpg	http://www.com

The ID field is created automatically and is the primary key - (it keeps each record unique) - for the database. Once you have saved your 2 records, on your local machine open your Frontpage web, click on the database in the fpdb folder you created; and your copy of Access2000 opens. If you want to make changes just edit the data, once you close the database the changes are uploaded to the server. It's that easy.

O.K.; so I have some data on the server in the database I created in a table named Results with 2 records. Now I want to display this information to people browsing my website.

What I am doing is asking Frontpage to display these column values in a particular place. The number of records returned would depend on the query.

Name
Email	Link

A query is simply a request (in a Structured - or commonly understood manner) to display specific information based on a question.

Click here to find out more about using SQL queries

The easiest way to query a web database is by using a URL: Here's our example: If I type www.mydomain.com/display.asp?name=John in my browser, if all is well ASP will search the database, look in the name column and return any records that are like John. If all is well I should only John's information in our example.

Just to make sure that you are following us here, take a look at the following URL and see if you can read between the lines:

http://www.meetnewplayers.com/bend/Listings/US/musiciansearch.asp?MusUSState=California

What does this tell us? At the website meetnewplayers.com, on the Active Server Page named musiciansearch please (?) display results from a database that is linked to that page from the column MusUSState which has records with the word California in this column.

If you open the California page at meetnewplayers.com you may notice that the "wrapper" or shared border always stays the same and is delivered using straight HTML. It's only the middle of the page that changes depending on the results generated.

Click here to find out more about using SQL queries

SQL is a premium product and can handle many thousand simultaneous queries without slowing down the search. This is important for a busy site like meetnewplayers.com This way the information comes from 2 sources, much faster and even more secure.

Our other site musiciansoft.com uses Access to display the database results for our artist reporting pages. Why don't we use SQL? The number of simultaneous logins is low, if it uses Access or text records on the server it won't tax the server too much because of the low volume. A good rule of thumb seems to be about 8 simultaneous users for Access and it works just fine.

Now we have some data and can query it,

Step3: Displaying pictures and hyperlinks

Step4: Use a database to log users and to serve custom information

Use SQL Statements to update and delete results