When we introduce pee pee we mentioned that BHP scripts can interact with my sequel databases through
Apache to perform various tasks in this section of the course we'll explore a very important part of
web development.
We'll be communicating instructions and storing user input into a database using BHP database driven
Web applications can do much more than static web pages because they allow for dynamic functionality.
To illustrate this think of some of your favorite Web sites that you use each day.
For example Facebook Twitter Netflix among others.
Each one of these websites is powered by a database regardless of the type of database these web applications
use all of their customer information user preferences and browsing habits are stored in a database
the web applications then use some type of scripting language such as P HP to access this information
and create user customized Web pages on the fly and in real time
if you've never worked with a database Don't worry you've probably worked with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.
You know that each spreadsheet is composed of rows and columns and that we can have multiple sheets
in a single workbook a database works almost the same way.
The database is the equivalent of the workbook database tables are equivalent to worksheets.
Each table contains rows and columns just like a worksheet.
There are some basic properties that each database has a database must have a name The database contains
one or more tables.
Each table must have a name.
The name should be relevant to the type of data the table stores.
For example a table that stores customer information.
Can be named customer Each table is composed of rows and columns a column is also referred to as a field
each field must have a unique heading.
For example a table that stores customer names could have two fields first name and last name the rows
in the table contain the data corresponding to the fields Each field has its own unique attributes.
We'll explore the attributes later in this section.