Data Driven Websites

Some web publishing tools provide functionality to generate data-driven websites. The advantage of a data-driven website over a static website is the ability to easily update website content.

Rather than needing to change multiple website pages when product prices change, for example, one can simply upload a database or a file to the web server.

Using this architecture, each of the web pages in the website that requires product prices can acces them dynamically from a single file or database. A web page is consequently built "dynamically" when a visitor requests a page that needs price information.

Not all web publishing applications have the ability to generate data-driven pages.  Most web authoring tools, however, provide functionality to insert "bolt-on" code that will read and display data from a website.

Products like Microsoft's Expression Web, however, permits XML databases to be integrated into a websites.