Creating Database-Driven Websites With Adobe Dreamweaver

Adobe Dreamweaver is one of the best visual web development tools around & one of the most widely used. It allows both experienced & inexperienced developers to build standards-compliant web sites without having to become fully conversant with all of the underlying technologies. On the client-side it contains tools for adding sophisticated JavaScript & Ajax functionality. On the server-side it allows for easy connection to data sources & has visual tools for creating data-driven search & results pages.

Dreamweaver offers the developer a choice of five scripting languages ASP ASP.NET PHP JSP & ColdFusion. This is specified as part of the site definition process in the Testing Server category the user must enter the parameters which will enable Dreamweaver to connect to a server which has the necessary scripting software. Either a local or remote server can be used.

The server-side development tools offered by Dreamweaver are very much the same regardless of the scripting language chosen. First you are able to connect to a data source which can be a database server such as Microsoft SQL Server or MySQL or a desktop database file such as an Access database.

Having connected to your data source you can retrieve a set of data using a SQL command. Dreamweaver offers a limited amount of help in building the SQL statement but the developer will need to acquire a basic knowledge of SQL syntax in order to retrieve the required data.

Next Dreamweaver allows you to populate the page with elements from dataset using simple drag & drop & other visual techniques. A number of useful server behaviors are also available to add functionality to the page. For example the Repeat Region server behavior will automatically repeat a given page item such as a DIV or table row as many times as there are records in a dataset.

Dreamweaver s Recordset Navigation Bar widget can be automatically inserted which will contain link to the first last next & previous pages of search results. The code generated by the server behavior will also cause the correct links to be visible or hidden; thus for example the first & previous links will not be visible when the first page of results is being displayed.

Thanks to Dreamweaver s well-known ease of use which applies equally to client-side & server-side development making the transition to building dynamic data-driven web sites can be a fairly painless process even for inexperienced web developers.

Author conducts Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 training courses: http://www.trainingcompany.com/adobe-dreamweaver-training.aspx & HTML/XHTML training: http://www.trainingcompany.com/xhtml-training.aspx in London & all over the United Kingdom.