Data Access Sections

A data access section is a special type of page in SiteMaker that is designed to access a data table. Each data access section can have up to four different views. You can determine which view is the default and what is accessible. You can also determin what is dsiplayed on each view.

• List view simply lists the records in your data table.
• Single view is for looking at one record.
• Add view is for adding a record.
• Search view allows the data table to be searched.
• Import view is for importing records from a file (comma separated value orr tab delomoted).

Multiple Data Access Sections

You can (and probably will) have more than one data access section for each data table you create. Before you create any sections you should probably list all the groups of people who would be accessing the data and what they would be doing with the data. The Accessing the States page talks about all the data access sections created to access the States data table and the reasoning behind why each or these were created. When you view this page you will also see links to each of these sections in the menu.

Food for Thought

You may want to consider hiding the data access section you use for managing data (adding, editing, and deleting records) as well and restricting access privileges. The advantage to this is that the navigation menu does not display a link to this section so there is noting for a visitor to click on that brings them to a log in screen. This makes your site look a little cleaner. The disadvantage is that you hide the section from yourself. You will either need to bookmark the section to get to it or preview it from your Main Configuration page.

Taking this idea a bit further, you can request a separate site for your data and create all the data access sections you need here. This site would be something you do not publicize. Then you return to your main web site and embed these sections you want to use from your data site.