Transactional Web Pages

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In most web forms, users can only type one series of data. For example, their name and address details, and then click the Submit button. It is an all-or-nothing operation: either they submit the data unconditionally, or they browse away and the data never gets stored.

In contrast, the generated interactive web pages are transactional. From the moment a user starts to enter data or to change retrieved data, a data transaction is built up across multiple web pages if required. The transaction is only stored and committed if the user clicks Save.

The great advantage of this is that you can have users enter several related series of data on different pages. For example, a user can enter a name and address and then proceed to place an order containing several order items. All of this is then saved in the database in one go, and it is either all accepted or rejected as a unit.

This allows you to build shopping-basket sequences of web pages more easily. It is also possible to design situations where the user needs to enter a lot of data on more than one page (for example, entering person details together with a reservation), but must have the freedom to quit at any time or go back, rather than having to enter and save each individual page irretrievably.

But perhaps most importantly, there are also vital advantages at database level to having transactional web pages. Databases are able to keep user transactions apart, enabling users to get a consistent view of all data throughout their own transaction regardless if other users have changed the data in the meantime.

Web Designer generates a structured set of interactive web pages for data transactions. You need a web design management tool to embed these pages on the web site.