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Data Binding builds pages on the client using standard HTML as a template and merges data with the template as the data is being transmitted. This results in pages that display data incrementally, during transmission, resulting in a faster initial response. There are benefits for the server too, as data is not being merged into pages at the server using complex scripts or templates. Data Binding used with DHTML provides a more interactive experience for the user.
Hopefully, an example will make all of this clearer. Consider viewing your phone bill over the Web. The authors of the Web site would have to produce several scripts to show you your bill sorted by certain criteria. One script would show it sorted by the date the call was made, another would show it sorted by length of the call and another would show it sorted by the cost of the call (and possibly all of these again in ascending order). In addition, all of your call data will have to be re-transmitted each time. You can see we have lots of pages and round trips to the server and much redundant data moving over potentially slow (28.8K) connections. All this, without considering the stress on the database server that has to retrieve all of the call data, time and again for each request.
If only the telephone company had used Data Binding, they would only have needed to write a single page to accomplish all of the above. In the real world, they would have to create pages for Netscape browsers, but to conserve bandwidth and server loading it would be certainly be worth developing the data bound version too.
On the next page, we will explain the components of the DHTML Data Binding architecture.
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Created: Oct 17, 2000
Revised: Oct 17, 2000
URL: http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/column39/3.html
