"Database-backed" describes web sites that keep important information in a database. They allow the web site to support information "transactions" with the user, with the results of all transactions stored permanently in the database. They allow a web site to have a memory. An organization can make its "institutional memory" available from any browser anywhere..

Every organization and business has a database, even if it's just a collection of written records. The magic starts when those records are stored in a powerful "relational" database management system that allows "relations" to be made between the data in records that might not have seemed related at first. Still more powerful databases are called Object Oriented. They provide very large containers for multi-megabyte media files and their accompanying Metadata. The containers can inherit properties from prototypes, simplifying design and Reuse.

And the really dazzling part comes when the database content is made accessible over the web (securely of course and with varying levels of permissions) to the many people inside and outside the organization who have an interest in the data.

Professor Philip Greenspun of MIT, along with Ars Digita (now the RedHat? CMS), has made the case for the database in his book "Database-Backed? Web Sites" and the more recent "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing."

A major objective of the world's largest corporations is to combine all their databases into a central Data Warehouse?, from which information can be delivered to the web using a Content Management System. With the cost of databases and web servers so low, even the world's smallest enterprises can now afford their own "EnterpriseInformationSystem" and manage their enterprise over the web.