At 11:22 AM -0500 12/5/01, Lynn Cummings wrote:
>   I have had a request for a PL/SQL course.  Are there others among us who
>would take such a class?  Please get back to me if this is something  you
>are interested in taking.  A description of what this class might be is below:

<soapbox>
In the words of the late Bill the Cat, "Acck pphhhhtt!"

Yes, PL/SQL is useful in the small confines of a strictly Oracle
universe, but we don't live in such a universe at UVM. I consider
PL/SQL an esoteric niche subject with limited applicability outside a
small and unfriendly domain of BANNER applications.

More utilitarian would be a general SQL course (as once taught by
Keith Kennedy), perhaps with extensions to SQL within the DBI
framework of perl or PHP. Such knowledge would enable the building of
a wide range of web-friendly (or even "command line") database
applications using either Oracle or mySQL or even (shudder) Microsoft
SQL-Server.

Note that the UVM web team has successful used such tools to construct

        http://www.uvm.edu/catalogue/

Please also note that this is not an offer to teach such a course myself.
</soapbox>
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| Wesley Alan Wright <mailto:[log in to unmask]>                   |
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