Dreamweaver: Create Data Driven Pages
Adobe Dreamweaver has a tool that helps to create pages that essentially carry a lot of data and text with themselves and hence carry various requirements before one can actually begin putting them into shape.
Dreamweaver requires you to put some efforts for some bits and bobs as these are to be in order and are to be set up for your environment.
Requirements for the Program:
Web Server: Free web server software are available and they can also be easily downloaded from internet. This free software should be run on your computer for development. These software come for free and do not require any additional installation cost or so.
Hence it can be easily run without spending a single penny
Web server is needed to create sites using Dreamweaver and other five main technologies. These five technologies comprise of ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, PHP and ColdFusion.
All of these system technologies require processing to be done on them which can be doe only by using a web server. Hence a web server is a must to have. This feature of Dreamweaver is the major differentiator from other versions or similar functions available in market.
For a beginner, starting work with ASP can be the best as it is the most commonly used technology. For ASP users, web server comes free along with Windows. However, it needs to get installed. For NT users, Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP Pro is the web server to be used. This can be installed through a CD.
Database: Database is nothing but bunch of information put together for your web pages. It can be simple and can be a CSV file. It can also be complex and can be a SQL file. All depends upon your requirement. For creating a small database, one can simply use Microsoft Access.
Basic knowledge would be required in the given field. One can browse the internet for this or can read lot of available books on the related topics.
Systems Connection to Database: A connection system needs to be put into place so as to connect the web server with the created database on your personal computer or machine. This will help you to define the location of database and apply simple rules on how the server should connect to the given database.
You can lay rules for how the database should be treated.
Different methods of making connection are available. However, the most commonly used of them are system DSN (Data Source Name). Using a latest available version of the MDAC from Microsoft s site can make things easy for you.