Data, Databases, and Back Offices

Roberto Peretta

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers

#09 .:. Thursday, December 4, 2014

Università degli studi di Bergamo. Area didattica di Lingue e Letterature straniere

Progettazione e gestione dei sistemi turistici / Planning and Management of Tourism Systems

Centro Studi per il Turismo e l’Interpretazione del Territorio (CeSTIT)

IfittItaly

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesWhat are we talking about, today?

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1. Databases

2. Back offices

3. Privileges

4. Dynamic Websites

5. Content Management Systems

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesDatabases

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From Wikipedia: “Databases are organized collections of data.

The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality (for

example, the availability of rooms in hotels), in a way that supports

processes requiring this information (e.g. finding a hotel with vacancies).”

The most diffused database applications – like Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL

Server, or Oracle MySQL – organize their data in tables.

Each table is organized according to a structure.

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesBack Offices

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A back office is a tool allowing you, well… to run an office from its back!

If you upload a database on a web server, you can build a back office allowing

you to manage the database on line.

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesPrivileges

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As you may have argued from our own website – where I can control your

passwords, while you can’t – databases allow different levels of privileges.

Different levels of users (the administrators, managers of specific functions or

areas, ordinary users…) enjoy different control powers.

It’s somehow like on Facebook, where you yourself may allow different privileges

to, say, “Friends”, “Friends of Friends” or “Everyone”.

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014

The “Privacy Settings and

Tools” page in your Facebook

account is something like a

back office of your “Timeline”

Facebook page.

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesDynamic Websites

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In fact Facebook, like every other social network, works with databases.

Today, practically all the websites work with databases…

When you design a website, you first design a template, providing the graphic

layout. Then you decide which pages based on the template should be available

to your visitors – according to the menu – and finally instruct each page

to generate its specific piece of content on-the-fly by retrieving it from a database

(or more than one), where your website’s content is stored.

Instructions to generate content are located within the html code of each page,

but are not written in html. They are scripts, written in one of several different

available scripting languages, called php, asp, aspx, Ruby…

Any website which is written in plain html is called a static website.

Any website the content of which is stored in a database is called a dynamic

website.

Static websites have now virtually disappeared.

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014

Data, Databases, and Back OfficesContent Management Systems

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When you access the back office of your dynamic website and update its

content, you immediately provide with updated content the website itself.

This is the basic function of any dynamic website.

When a website is complicated – i.e. when it simultaneously manages several

different sorts of content, like users, permissions, places, pictures, comments,

questions, answers, orders… – its back office also becomes complicated.

An application that allows publishing, editing and modifying complicated content,

as well as organizing, deleting and maintening it from a central back office, is

called a Content Management System (CMS).

To quote Wikipedia, “Such systems of content management provide procedures

to manage workflow in a collaborative environment”.

UniBg 44111 2014-2015 .:. IT for Tourism Managers .:. Roberto Peretta .:. December 4, 2014