What is a Web Application?

Web Applications are Web Sites that contain pages with content that is determined at the time the visitor requests the page.

Web Applications allow:

• Content to be updated automatically (e.g. news reports)
• Information to be retrieved from visitors to the site (e.g. customer surveys)
• Content to be specific for each visitor (e.g. shopping carts)

The range of skills required to develop a Web Application is substantially greater than those required for a Web Site with static content. For example, the Web Application may need to:

• Communicate with a database
• Authenticate individual users
• Conditionally restrict access to parts of the application
• Deliver email notifications
• Perform financial transactions
• Take the user through a sequence of actions

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