Data Driven Programs are programs which process data files whose contents cause the program to do something different. WikiWikiWeb:DataDrivenPrograms

When doing Data Driven programming, one clearly distinguishes code from the Data Structure-s on which it acts, and designs both so that one can make changes to the logic of the program by editing not the code but the Data Structure. Data-driven programming is sometimes confused with object orientation, another style in which data organization is supposed to be central. There are at least two differences. One is that in data-driven programming, the data is not merely the state of some object, but actually defines the control flow of the program. Where the primary concern in OOP is encapsulation, the primary concern in data-driven programming is writing as little fixed code as possible. Unix has a stronger tradition of data-driven programming than of OOP. http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch09s01.html

(Some people, esp book authors, use this term to describe WebSite-s with a Data Base back-end. This is to contrast against static-file sites...)

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