What's all this 'Interactive' stuff anyway?

This text was originally posted in early 2001. ChelseaData.ca is now a commercial venture, although still part-time.

The Internet is made up of billions (trillions?) of html pages. Many of the pages are 'static'; that is, they exist as pre-formatted files that are served up the same way every time.

But if you want to put a catalogue on-line with hundreds of thousands of items, you wouldn't want to have a pre-built page for every item. It would become a maintenance nightmare, what with prices changing all the time, and changing products and sizes, etc. etc.

Or what about a data entry form, or a survey, or a search engine. These are all examples of interactivity, where you might get a different answer, depending on what you submit from the browser. Usually, there's a database lurking in the background somewhere and through the miracles of server-side programming, html pages are written on-the-fly, individually tailored to a specific request. This ain't rocket science by any means, but the internet presents unique challenges compared to network or stand-alone data applications.

I'm interested in writing interactive data applications, and this web server is my laboratory. It's currently a non-commercial operation - I'm not gaining anything but the experience. (I can't afford lots of bandwidth, so the graphics are few and far between. My apologies to all the form over function people out there.)

Anyway, thanks for visiting!