how to connect onmouseover and database?

[scorpioy]

Could someone tell me how to implement this scenario: when the mouse is on a link, an associated area will show up and some information will be displayed; when the mouse moves over it, the area disappears.

I know onmouseover is about javascript/html question, but I don't want to simply display some fixed thing when onmouseover event occurs. I want it to display something which have to look up from some table in database according to where the mouse is.

For example, I retrieve rows from movie table, columns include movie name, movie type, movie price, movie primary actor. These rows form a table. When mouse is over a movie primary actor in a table cell. I want a small window to show up and display a list of actors in this movie which I stored this list in another table. How could I achieve this implementation?

Thanks.

[rehfeld]

well, either output all the possibilities all at once, and use js to decide which possibility to display

or,

take a look at the XMLHttpRequest Object

heres some good demos:

http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/XMLHttpRequestExample/example.html
http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/xmlhttpreq.htm
l

[Roger_Ramjet]

Very much depends on page layout and size and number of contents. If there are a lot of links and content that you want popups for then outputting it all into a javascript array could be very cumbersome. If there are only a few, say 20 per page, then this javascript is very simple and works wonders: the user experience is instantaneous as opposed to waiting for a db query to return and load. You can leave it as is, which is mouse positioned, or change it to an absolute page position whichever suits your needs.

Third alternative is similar to rehfeld's xml requestor example, just use an iframe