Frequently Asked Questions
MySQL Databasing
What does MySQL stand for exactly?
MySQL stand for "My Structure Query Language". In short this means that MySQL is based on a universal language known as SQL which has been developed since the 1970's. SQL is accepted as the definitive model for relational database management systems (RDBMS).
What is a database?
Any set of information may be called a database. Nevertheless, the term was invented to refer to computerised data, and is used almost exclusively in computing. Sometimes it is used to refer to not yet computerised data, but usually in the process of planning its possible computerisation.
What does DBMS mean?
Software created to manage generalised databases is usually called a database management system or DBMS.
What is the difference between the DBMS front-end and back-end?
The DBMS front-end (i.e., the clients) is concerned mainly with data entry, enquiry and reporting. The back-end (i.e. the server) is the set of programs that actually control data storage, responding to requests from the frontend. Searching and sorting is usually performed by the server.
Once my PHP site is built, what do I need to get it online?
In most cases you will simply need a hosting plan and a domain name. A combination of the two starts as little as $70.00 per year. We strongly recommend hosting PHP on a Linux hosting plan.
PHP
What is PHP?
PHP is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages quickly.
What does PHP stand for?
PHP stands for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. This confuses many people because the first word of the acronym is the acronym. This type of acronym is called a recursive acronym.
Javascript
What is Javascript good for?
Forms Validation, because Javascript can be disabled you must always perform validation on the server side but any validation of user input you can also perform interactively with the user before a form is submitted can save the user a round trip to the server and can save your server a hit where no actual transaction occurs.
Interactive Forms, In the case of something like an online store it's always nice to update order totals and (when possible) shipping costs and other incidental costs (handling fees, taxes...) as the user updates the quantities or selects/deselects various items on the page. While you may want to post that toal back to your server for your own security, you must never trust that figure. Recalculate any totals based on the posted selections/quantities, you can however compare the posted total vs the server side computed total to detect bugs in the script and/or attempts at theft.
Visual aides, the Title property can and should be used to give a user of your web page additional information about some element or group of elements on your page but javascript can be used to supplement the relatively weak content control available via the title property with a much richer full html content using a tooltip script.
Will the JavaScript I write work the same in all browsers?
JavaScript works a little different in a Netscape and Internet Explorer Browser. Different versions of the browsers also have different versions of JavaScript. In most cases, your JavaScript will work the same in all browsers. However, it is very important that you test any JavaScript you write in as many Browsers as you can. In some cases you will need to modify your JavaScript coding to make it work in all of the various browsers.
