Well ... yes and no. You can use the data in the database to dynamically generate web pages, but it'll take more than just the database and some SQL queries. You'll need some sort of scripting language that will retrieve the data, and do what you want with it. I personally would suggest PHP, but there are others. It's just that PHP is easy to learn, can be run easily by the web server (most Linux distros come with PHP support built into apache), and it has APIs for just about any database you want: MySQL, PostgreSQL, mSQL, even Microsoft SQL, as well as ODBC. Once you've chosen a scripting language, you're only limited by that language's functionality and your imagination.

Essentially, what you want to have happen is to have people call your script through their web browsers, your web server runs it, and the script logs in to your SQL server, submits whatever queries it needs to get the information, does something with it, and outputs it to stdout. Then, the web server takes the script's stdout, and sends it back to the web browser that called it. In theory you could have your script output the data in whatever form you wanted. I tried at work to have it output XML, and have a static XSL sheet on my server. Unfortunately, my boss uses Safari web browser, and that won't do client-side XML/XSLT parsing. I've even been able to dynamically generate images from database data using a setup like this. (Hey, I thought it was pretty cool.)

Keep the list posted so we can help you out.

Lloyd Brown



Ryan Bowman wrote:

So I'm in the process of learning SQL.  Isn't there a way to dynamically build a web 
page from an sql database?  Where would be a could place to learn this?  I've been 
looking around but can't seem to find anything.


---- Ryan Bowman

I can feel the walls closing in on me,
the door at the end of the tunnel is far too small...
 - Closing In 2.0 - Don't Be Afraid - insoc.org
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