Database access with HTML and Java-a comparison based on practical experiences

We use HTML and Java to enable relational databases for the World Wide Web and provide a comparison between both techniques based on practical experiences. We introduce a novel design and implementation technique for database backed Web applications based on a state machine model. The key idea is to create a design language to describe the user interface layout, the functionality and the database transactions in a homogenous way. The implementation of such a system is then composed from several parts with potentially different techniques, for example either a pure HTML interface with all its functionality at the server side or a Java applet with more functionality at the client side. The goal is to generate the different implementations automatically from the design language. With this development framework the design and implementation of various database backed Web applications will be easier, faster and less error prone.