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Background Information

When complete, the Web application created in this tutorial consists of four HTML documents. Some documents have static anchors that, when activated, perform a database function that in turn dynamically creates another Web page. The contents of the dynamically created Web pages are based on the contents of your database and a supplied template HTML file. The first page of your application, home.html, is shown in Figure 3-19.

Figure 3-19 First Web page in tutorial 1 - home.html

Clicking the left mouse button on the Book Search icon will invoke a CGI program, generated by Sapphire/Web, that combines data from your database with a template HTML file, resulting in the next (dynamically created) page seen in your browser. The books.html template is illustrated in Figure 3-20 with data in the options menu.

Figure 3-20 Second Web page in tutorial 1 - books.html

This second page contains HTML Form elements that, based on search criteria entered, allow your end-user to obtain information from your database in a third template named book_results.html (Figure 3-21).

Figure 3-21 Third Web page in tutorial 1 - book_results.html

This Web page will contain a Hotlist of Anchors whose items, when clicked on, provide more detail in yet another template, as seen in Figure 3-22.

Figure 3-22 Fourth Web page in tutorial 1 - book_detail.html

The process flow of your resultant application is illustrated below in Figure 3-23.

Figure 3-23 Tutorial 1 Process Flow

When the end-user clicks on the Book Search icon in home.html, books.html appears in their browser with an Options Menu that is pre-populated with data from their database. This page allows them to specify the Title and Category of books in which they are interested. When the Submit Query button in books.html is pressed, the values in the Title and Category fields become arguments to a database query which populates a Hotlist in book_results.html with book titles. Each Hotlist item in book_results.html can then be clicked upon to see details about each book.


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