Why Do I Need an RDBMS on the WWW?

The World Wide Web (WWW), once used primarily by computer professionals and academia, has become the fastest growing information delivery vehicle. Initial uses of the WWW have included customer support, advertising, electronic shopping, and on-line publishing. As the security issues of electronic commerce are improved, this will expand the demands on WWW functionality dramatically.

Currently over 30 million people use the WWW. This number is increasing by more than two million new users per month. There are over 30 thousand Web sites, with more than 10 thousand new Web sites being added each quarter. Clearly this indicates that if you are not doing business over the Internet, you should seriously consider the possibility soon.

Many of the current applications on the WWW are adequately served by flat-file information systems. As the sophistication and complexity of Web applications increases, access to relational databases will be essential. Any transactional systems, such as order processing, or complex search engines, will need the power and flexibility provided by RDBMS connectivity. Tracking orders, customer account information, product specifications, and many other forms of data will be immediatly accessable to those who need the information.

Netscape or Mosaic can be thought of as just other front ends to your database. All of the advantages of RDBMS over flat files -- increased speed of inquiries, flexibilty of queries, the ability to store many terabytes of data, the inclusion of complex datatypes, etc. -- will be available to people using your Web site. All of the information you wish to provide to your employees and customers will be available, without having to change the structure or format of your existing database.

Informix is providing the capabilty for developers to connect their WWW sites to their relational database systems. Informix has developed libraries that will allow developers to build ESQL/C or 4GL programs that will work through the common gateway interface (CGI).

In addition, several public domain software options exist. However, some of these offer query capability only, and do not offer the complete functionality of the Informix offerings.

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