A web query just fetches an HTML page from a web server: that page could be
either static (hardcoded) or dynamic.
Dynamic pages accept input parameters as part of the page address, as in
your example, or from a web form posted to the page. Dynamic pages can be
coded in a number of different languages (PERL, vbscript, javascript, java,
etc) on a number of platforms. Basic mechanism is the same though - the
supplied parameters are usually converted into a [SQL] query which is then
run against a datasource (usually a database of some sort). The query
results are converted to a form which can be included in a web page: this is
constructed on the fly and sent back to the requestor. The dynamic parts of
the page might included tables and/or graphics.

A large topic really. Many introductions to this kind of thing can be found
online.

Random links
Intro to CGI: http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/intro.html
ASP: http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/...asp_intro.html
ColdFusion: http://tech.irt.org/articles/js123/



Tim.

"shockley" wrote in message
...
I would like to know how web queries are set up on the server side (if,
indeed, there is any setup involved), in other words, how do they work?

When I do a web query, am I requesting information from a database on the
web server, or am I just looking for tables on a particular web page?

To ask with an example, can I submit a web query to this symbol lookup
page
on Yahoo Finance?
http://finance.yahoo.com/l or would I have to query the webpage that
returns results for a typed-in request, for example, this page that is
returned from typing in "Intel" and pressing "Look Up":
http://finance.yahoo.com/l?s=intel&t=S&m=US

If this is a complex issue, I'd appreciate links to articles.

Shockley