We have to confess that we are prejudiced in favour of databases because we've been involved in their development since the mid-eighties. The first ones we built were designed to store the world-wide flight details of international airlines offering bargain seats to travellers in the UK.

These days most of the databases we build are for small companies and their websites. We specialise in Microsoft Access and SQL Server development. We won't advise you to go for the most expensive option if we think that the cheaper one can handle your site. For example, one of our Access online databases was handling an average of 25,000 visits per month and recording thousands of online orders worth in excess of  £1.5 million a year until it was updated to SQL server recently.

A master database in your office can be designed to store all the information you need about your products and/or services. The master database can then be used to generate an online version of the database that serves your website, which will only contain information that you want visitors to see. In this way the data will only ever need to be entered once so there will be no possibility of transcription errors and everything will be under control. If you want it to, the master database can also be used to generate invoices and update your accounts system. In fact, it could be your accounts system.

A database can be designed to store all manner of data, but for the majority of websites the main table will contain details of the products or services that are on sale. There is virtually no limit to how much information can be stored and a single product entry can contain links to other information such as photographs and colour swatches to be displayed, datasheets, material safety data, instructions, video demonstrations etc.