Summary

In this chapter, we've looked at the different ways that we can create dynamic content for our pages. This content might come from some kind of data store, such as a relational database; be something provided by the user, such as values entered into text boxes on a form; or be calculated depending on some environment value, such as the server's clock.

The techniques we examined for building the pages are based on four different root principles:

Creating and writing content into the page directly
Inserting another file using SSI
Creating content from a component like the Content Linking component
Reading it from a data store such as a relational database

In particular, we looked at:

A brief summary of the most useful dynamic content techniques
Dynamic content created with Server-Side Include text files
Dynamic content created with the Content Linking component
Dynamic content created from information stored in a database
An example of a non-relational data store—Index Server
Creating 'semi-dynamic' pages using SQL Server Web Assistant

The techniques we demonstrated are by no means an exhaustive list, but should have indicated some the approaches you might consider when designing and building your own sites. You'll see plenty more examples of the ways that most of these techniques can be used in the remaining chapters of this book.

One issue that we came across in several places in this and previous chapters was that of browser compatibility. Modern browsers allow us to build more intelligent pages, which can relieve the load on our server while offering a more responsive and interactive environment for the viewer. In the next chapter, we’ll take up this topic in more depth and see how we cope with the challenges it provides.