A database is the brain behind your website, the part that allows it to remember stuff and to search for and manipulate data. We are experts at writing database backed websites and applications.
What is a Database Application?
A database application is simply a website or program that uses a database to store and process information. Simple examples are blogs and CMS systems that store content in the database, or e-commerce systems that use the database to store products and orders. With a custom database application you are not just limited to these simple examples, and we can build you a site to store any kind of data, and to search through and display it in any way that you want.
What Can I Do with a Database?
The main thing that a database achieves for your site is that it allows your website to remember things. Databases can either be used to store data that you have created, that your users create or a combination of the two.
A simple of example of data that you might want to upload to your website would be a product database. You would be able to log into a hidden back-end area of your website to add new products to your site that your users can then buy. The data that you upload can be completely customised to your site with whatever fields and information you need for your specific products. We can also customise the pages that you use to edit your database so that it is quick and efficient to enter the data, and we can add error checking so that it's difficult for you to make mistakes.
It's also possible to create a site that collects data from your users. The following are some examples of user generated data:
- A simple mailing list that records your users' email addresses for you to retrieve later
- A blog where your users can post comments which are then visible to other users of your site
- An e-commerce system where an order is saved every time a user buys something
These are just a few examples of what's possible when we integrate a database into your website.
What About my Existing Data?
If you have an existing database, or any kind of existing data that you need to integrate into your website, we will be able to either integrate your new website with your existing database, or we will write a program to convert your data into a new format. We have a lot of experience of importing large and complicated databases from one system to another, even from one type of database to another.