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Internet
overview
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By
BRIAN MORGAN
and
DEAN NIQUETTE
Skyline Technologies, Inc.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: This is the final part of a series.
Pulling all of the technologies explained in the previous
articles in this series together, we can now describe what
happens "under-the-covers" when a user requests a Web page
from a Web site. The process is enumerated below.
1. A Web user types a URL such as http://www.ST.com/ContactUs/Contact.htm
at the browser command line.
2. The browser takes the URL and formulates an HTTP request.
In the above illustration it is assumed that no data is being
passed to the Web server and therefore, an HTTP GET command
can be used.
3. TCP/IP reliably delivers the request to the Web server
www.ST.com.
4. Upon receiving the HTTP request, the Web server looks in
the Web site directory for the file /ContactUs/Contact.htm.
5. Finding this file, the Web server encapsulates it within
the response body of an HTTP response.
6. The HTTP response is then provided to TCP/IP for reliable
transmission back to the user's browser.
7. Receiving the HTTP response, the browser extracts the HTML
from the response body and, adhering to the markup provided
by the HTML tags, displays the associated text.
Dynamic Web Sites
To this point the discussion has focused around traditional
"static" Web sites. Within these sites Web pages exist strictly
as HTML files.
As a result, changing content implies copying or publishing
new Web pages to a site, a process that can be prone to error.
Moreover, the sheer number of pages needed for these sites
can be staggering and lead to a management nightmare. In fact,
one site that Skyline recently overhauled had over 1,000 pages,
many of which had to be touched on a daily basis to keep content
fresh.
More significant however, is the fact that these sites cannot
access the real-time data often needed for a business to compete
in today's marketplace. Shortly after static sites became
operational, many savvy business leaders recognized the competitive
advantages found by offering their customers useful business
information, such as order and invoice data, through the Web.
The Web community responded to this request by creating "dynamic"
Web sites. The content for these pages is actually determined
at the time they are requested, and is usually queried from
a "business-strength" database. Moreover, the business leader
has the option of creating Web applications that allow the
update of this database information, an option that is not
realistic with a static Web site.
The manner in which a dynamic Web site operates is a little
different than that described in Figure 1. This operation
is outlined below:
1. A corporate user requests information for Company XYZ at
her browser.
2. Upon receiving this request the Web server invokes the
associated business application.
3. The business application, recognizing that information
is required for Business XYZ, queries the database.
4. Using the information returned by the database, the business
application dynamically builds an HTML page.
5. The HTML with its dynamically generated content is returned
to the browser.
The authors are from Skyline Technologies and can be reached
via e-mail at [email protected]
and [email protected]..
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