To learn more about JSP, visit the Sun Microsystems website at 

java.sun.com/products/jsp/

.

To learn more about PHP, visit the PHP website at 

www.php.net/

.

Web application terminology

This section defines frequently used terms relating to web applications.

An application server

 is software that helps a web server process web pages 

containing server side scripts or tags. When such a page is requested from 

the server, the web server hands the page off to the application server for 

processing before sending the page to the browser. For more information, 

see 

 How a web application works  on page 219

. 

Common application servers include Macromedia ColdFusion, 

Macromedia JRun Server, the Microsoft .NET Framework, IBM 

WebSphere, and Apache Tomcat. 

A database

 is a collection of data stored in tables. Each row of a table 

constitutes one record and each column constitutes a field in the record, as 

shown in the following example. 

Fields (columns)

Number

LastName FirstName

Position

Goal

Records

(rows)

A database driver

 is software that acts as an interpreter between a web 

application and a database. Data in a database is stored in a proprietary 

format. A database driver lets the web application read and manipulate 

data that would otherwise be undecipherable.

A database management system

 (DBMS, or database system) is software 

used to create and manipulate databases. Common database systems 

include Microsoft Access, Oracle 9i, and MySQL.

A database query

 is the operation that extracts a recordset from a 

database. A query consists of search criteria expressed in a database 

language called SQL. For example, the query can specify that only certain 

columns or only certain records be included in the recordset.

Web application terminology 227