The process of designing and integrating a database into a company's website begins with understanding that company's structure and how data flows within that structure. Unless a database reflects the company's way of doing business it will never be flexible enough to grow to allow changes and to support different user views.

The use of a database to drive a website has several major benefits:

• It allows us to separate content from presentation. Using only a few templates and inserting data into those templates from the database is very effective way to create a consistent look across all pages. Any changes to the template flow right through the site, which results in not only a consistent look but much lower maintenance costs.
• Allows us to create very efficient ways to maintain content. As web pages are generated from the database any changes to the database immediately reflect in changes to the page. It is much more efficient and cheaper to make changes to the database than it is to make changes directly to a HTML page.