# Publishing Dynamic Data

A Web application page is different from a static Web page because it can publish data dynamically. This can involve querying databases, connecting to LDAP or mail servers, and leveraging COM, DCOM, CORBA, or Java objects to retrieve, update, insert, and delete data at runtime -- as your users interact with pages in their browsers.

For ColdFusion developers, the term "data source" can refer to a number of different types of structured content accessible locally or across a network. You can query Web sites, LDAP servers, POP mail servers, and documents in a variety of formats.

Most commonly though, a database will drive your applications, and for this discussion a data source is defined as the entry point for database operations.

During this chapter, you will build a query to retrieve data from `company.mdb`, an Access database. In subsequent chapters in this book, you will insert and update data in this database.

To build a query, you will need to use:

- ColdFusion data sources
- The CFQUERY tag
- SQL commands