Email is a wonderful way to communicate with large numbers of people, provide status information, and to conduct an ongoing business relationship. The downside of email is that the client does not always get the information they desire, like a name and phone number, when a customer responds. DataObjects are superior. Unlike an email response, certain fields can be set as required to complete a submission. More importantly, information retrieved into a database can be retrieved online, merged into a client database, or queried for custom reporting.
Databases are the ideal way to store and retrieve information over the Web.
The problem was that there was no easy way to integrate an industrial strength database with a website. It can be done, but it required expensive, custom built solutions. HTML, the language in which all websites are constructed, does not support any database functions. The solution has been to individually construct query pages based on the HTML page or JAVA programming. Reinventing the wheel for each site requires a huge investment in programming and an Internet service provider who is able to run and support SQL databases.