Chapter 6. Databases
In one sense, all Web sites are about information, or data. The stories on a news site are data, as are the items in a catalog. A great deal of data exists behind the scenes, such as information about users or the types of data they are interested in.
The problem of organizing large amounts of data is not a new one; many companies had to organize inventory or customer data long before the Web. This need to organize data gave rise to a kind of application called a database, a repository of structured information optimized to store and retrieve data quickly. Databases also allow multiple users to access or even change the same data simultaneously without corrupting it.
This chapter presents a brief overview of database technology, including standard tag library built-in features that greatly simplify working with databases. This chapter also discusses low-level techniques that allow JavaServer Pages to access databases and then discusses a bean-based approach that is both sophisticated and simple to use.
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