Chapter 19: Getting the Data

Overview

As you know by now, the specific language and database you choose to develop your site will have a subtle effect on how you deal with dynamic data. However, for the most part, Dreamweaver MX deals with data, programming languages, and databases in a consistent way. For example, regardless of the language or database, Dreamweaver MX pulls data from your database through a data connection and places the data in a recordset. As you recall from previous chapters, a recordset is simply a collection of data from your database. From that recordset, you can manipulate and display data in your web pages using Server Behaviors such as master/detail page sets, dynamic text, dynamic table, repeating regions, and so on.

Dreamweaver MX also uses these Server Behaviors to treat ASP, ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JSP, and PHP a bit differently. Not every Server Behavior is available to each language. For example, master/detail page sets are only available to ASP, ColdFusion, and JSP. But we'll get to that in Chapter 21. Before we can really begin our "Getting the Data" discussion, we need to take care of some website housekeeping tasks such as properly configuring your site's testing server so that you can view and preview your dynamic web pages. Then we'll discuss creating recordsets from data we pull through data connections. Finally, you'll learn the many ways to output dynamic data to your script page.