Dynamic content sources overview, About dynamic content sources, About recordsets – Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2015 User Manual
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Dynamic sites, pages and web forms
Last updated 6/3/2015
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Dynamic content sources overview
Note: The user interface has been simplified in Dreamweaver CC and later. As a result, you may not find some of the
options described in this article in Dreamweaver CC and later. For more information, see
About dynamic content sources
A dynamic content source is a store of information from which you can retrieve and display dynamic content for use in
a web page. Sources of dynamic content include not only information stored in a database, but values submitted by
HTML forms, values contained in server objects, and other content sources.
Dreamweaver lets you easily connect to a database and create a recordset from which to extract dynamic content. A
recordset is the result of a database query. It extracts the specific information you request and allows you to display that
information within a specified page. You define the recordset based on the information contained in the database and
the content you want to display.
Different technology vendors may use different terminology for a recordset. In ASP and ColdFusion, a recordset is
defined as a query. If you are using other sources of data, such as user input or server variables, the name of the data
source that is defined in Dreamweaver is the same as the data source name itself.
Dynamic websites require a data source from which to retrieve and display dynamic content. Dreamweaver lets you use
databases, request variables, URL variables, server variables, form variables, stored procedures, and other sources of
dynamic content. Depending on the data source, you can either retrieve new content to satisfy a request, or modify the
page to meet the needs of users.
Any content source that you define in Dreamweaver is added to the list of content sources in the Bindings panel. Then
you can insert the content source into the currently selected page.
About recordsets
Web pages can’t directly access the data stored in a database. Instead, they interact with a recordset. A recordset is a
subset of the information (records), extracted from the database using a database query. A query is a search statement
designed to find and extract specific information from a database.
When using a database as a content source for a dynamic web page, you must first create a recordset in which to store
the retrieved data. Recordsets serve as an intermediary between the database storing the content and the application
server generating the page. Recordsets are temporarily stored in the application server’s memory for faster data
retrieval. The server discards the recordset when it is no longer needed.
A query can produce a recordset that includes only certain columns, only certain records, or a combination of both. A
recordset can also include all the records and columns of a database table. However, because applications rarely need
to use every piece of data in a database, you should strive to make your recordsets as small as possible. Because the web
server temporarily holds the recordset in memory, using a smaller recordset uses less memory, and can potentially
improve server performance.