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About working with databases

You can use information from many types of database sources (such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access, and Microsoft Excel) in your web site. 

What is a database?

Think of a database as a sophisticated version of an index card file. For example, an employee phone list consists of index cards filed in alphabetical order by the employees' last names. Each card contains an employee's ID number, last name, first name, and company telephone extension.

1  Represents a record source table containing employee information

2  Field labels indicating employee's first name, last name, and telephone number

3 Three employee records

4  A field value

In database terminology, each employee's card is called a record. Together, all the cards in the index card file are called a table, or record source. Each item on a card is called a field. On a card in the employee phone list, the first name is considered one field; the last name, another field, and so on. In a database, the fields are broken into two parts: the field label, which identifies the field (for example, LastName) and the field value, which is the actual data in the field (for example, "Smith").

The Database Results Wizard is the tool you use to do most of the tasks relating to databases. The wizard enables you to:

You can use databases stored in several places, such as:

Notes   To display database information in your web site, your site must be hosted on a web server that supports Active Server Pages (ASP) and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). Your Internet service provider (ISP) or web administrator can tell you whether your web server supports ASP and ADO.