Adobe Dreamweaver CC 2014 v.13 - Manual (Page 652)

Understanding web applications
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About web applications
Common uses for web applications
Web application example
How a web application works
Processing static web pages
Processing dynamic pages
Accessing a database
Authoring dynamic pages
Web application terminology
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
this article .
About web applications
A web application is a website that contains pages with partly or entirely undetermined content. The final content of a page is determined only
when the visitor requests a page from the web server. Because the final content of the page varies from request to request based on the visitor’s
actions, this kind of page is called a dynamic page.
Web applications are built to address a variety of challenges and problems. This section describes common uses for web applications and gives a
simple example.
Common uses for web applications
Web applications have many uses for both site visitors and developers, including the following:
Let visitors find information quickly and easily on a content-rich website.
This kind of web application gives visitors the ability to search, organize, and navigate content as they see fit. Examples include company
intranets, Microsoft MSDN (
www.msdn.microsoft.com ), and Amazon.com ( www.amazon.com ).
Collect, save, and analyze data provided by site visitors.
In the past, data entered in HTML forms was sent as e-mail messages to employees or CGI applications for processing. A web application
can save form data directly into a database and also extract the data and create web-based reports for analysis. Examples include online
banking pages, store check-out pages, surveys, and user-feedback forms.
Update websites that have constantly changing content.
A web application frees the web designer from continually updating the site’s HTML. Content providers such as news editors provide the web
application with content, and the web application updates the site automatically. Examples include the Economist (
www.economist.com ) and
CNN ( www.cnn.com ).
Web application example
Janet is a professional web designer and longtime Dreamweaver user responsible for maintaining the intranet and Internet sites of a medium-sized
company of 1000 employees. One day, Chris from Human Resources comes to her with a problem. HR administers an employee fitness program
that gives employees points for every mile walked, biked, or run. Each employee must report his or her monthly mile totals in an e-mail to Chris. At
the end of the month, Chris gathers all the e-mail messages and awards employees small cash prizes according to their point totals.
Chris’s problem is that the fitness program has grown too successful. So many employees now participate that Chris is inundated with e-mails at
the end of each month. Chris asks Janet if a web-based solution exists.
Janet proposes an intranet-based web application that performs the following tasks:
Lets employees enter their mileage on a web page using a simple HTML form
Stores the employees’ mileage in a database
Calculates fitness points based on the mileage data
Lets employees track their monthly progress
Gives Chris one-click access to point totals at the end of each month
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