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Database Destiny

May 21st, 2006

How can your organization successfully embrace emerging Web technologies and methods of content delivery on the Internet? It seems like every month there is a new hot technology in the industry or a technique that has the Web in a flurry. Every time a colleague or client reads an industry magazine, website, newspaper, or attends a conference, they are introduced to new buzz words. They ask, “can we do that on our website?”

Tactics versus Strategy

Advanced Web technology can be very dangerous to the ill-prepared. Technology is a tactic—a device for accomplishing an end. The risk is when tactics are not founded on a strategy—a careful plan or method. This risk means loss of focus or even worse, time.

Examples of buzzing tactical technologies on the Web are RSS, podcast, blog, syndication, web standards, CSS, and tagging.

Recognize the Trend

The static, flat Web is no longer hot. But, the Internet is still booming. In fact, Web 2.0 has really taken a stronghold on the entire industry and the opportunities are endless. Basically, if you can dream it now, it can be done on the Web. What makes this possible?

I’ll address the question via a hypothetical client meeting where I am only allowed to give one piece of Web-related advice. That is it—only one single, solitary suggestion. The client, fresh from a conference, wishes to embrace the Web 2.0 renaissance and therefore transition to the Web as their dominant marketing communications and content management vehicle.

Best piece of advice; build a database.

To elaborate; the Web is no longer a system of static, flat files with handwritten text interwoven with programming languages. In fact, most of the (professionally-built) Web is a complex system of databases and centralized content sharing bursts of information. A website is merely one mechanism to distribute this information via structured database queries that slice and segment the content requested by the end user. In the case of a website, this data is layered with presentation (color, images, design, etc…) and then delivered to your browser. For RSS, data is formatted in a file that is recognized by software or websites that aggregate and syndicate the content. There are many more examples.

Every professional website is destined to be driven by a database. It is the purest form of web standards; separating content from presentation. And, a database allows for future innovations and technologies to feed off of it from the same exact source without the need to create independent, disconnected islands (or silos) of information. Once a database is professionally created, it grows. It matures. It is nimble and fast. New technologies on the web are created to distribute content in new and amazing ways. Databases make this possible.

So, instead of asking “should we podcast” or “should we redesign our website,” you should first have answered this question: “how should we store our data so that we can distribute it from one centralized source?” This is your website’s destiny.

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