As the content of the Web is shifting from static to dynamic, more and more companies are looking for the way of making their corporate data available online. The combination of Web and databases is one of the best ways of publishing information, both for Web publishers who need to post last minute information on their pages and for the intranet developers who need to give their corporate users access to the existing company information. A Web database application interacts with a database, uses the Web as a means of connection and a Web browser as a front-end client. Virtually any Web application can benefit from using data and information stored in databases. Some typical business examples are online banking and securities trading, online stores, shopping malls and catalogs, product information, online technical support, and recruiting of employees. This paper presents a technological overview of existing application architectures and presents the three-tier application model, which is widely adopted as a standard way of building Web database applications. Database connectivity architecture is presented with description of all of its layers. Generally used connectivity techniques like CGI and Web server API’s are explained in detail. The performance gain when using API’s instead of CGI and other issues are discussed. Methods for creating Web-database applications, as well as most of the performance and security aspects of database driven Web sites are described later on. Some general techniques for achieving better performance and security are presented. Web application development is moving to 4GL and rapid application development tools that help users develop advanced applications in short time are becoming necessary tools for any Web programmer. A few of the most popular Web-database connectivity tools in Windows operating environment, like Cold Fusion, ASP, iHTML and Tango, are shortly described at the end of the paper.