Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-edu (146 mails)

[Clive Jones <clive@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Alan Harris wrote:
> Many thanks...
> 
> I have considered DB2 but the problem is cost (as a Lotus site DB2 would be great).

A fine DB from big blue - one of the heavyweights, with a price to reflect
this unfortunately.  I'm going to IBM tomorrow to see the rest of their
offerings.

> 
> Eventually I intend to have the whole thing running as a 'web based' operation to make
> the front end "teacher friendly". I have accessed the PostgreSQL server from another
> linux box using the Kpsql client without any problem so it's obviously a windows
> thing.
> 
> I actually intend to use Perl to generate, execute and return the results from queries
> submitted via HTML - tests indicate that it will work here quite well. My interest in
> the windows clients was based on not having to teach admin staff how to use Linux!
> 

This is an excellent way to develop applications.  As most people with a
computer have experience of a browser, the learning curve for the new
application is shorter.  The application is platform independant, and can be
deployed across the internet ior an intranet if required.  Applications are also
fairly future-proof and should be low maintainence (I've lost count of
code-rewrites needed for VB 'upgrades').  People who are using just one
application for large volumes of work still prefer a 'hard-coded'
client, but can't see this being a problem in education.

I haven't tried it yet, but KSql (which is compatible with PostgreSQL via a
plugin) has a further plugin to convert KSql forms to HTML using 3 lines of PHP.
You may have already evaluated this and rejected it, but it does look like it
could be a potential development-time saver. An advantage of this is that
you can always still use Perl when you want or need to.

> However, I don't think that such an exercise would be a bad thing. If it wasn't for  
>  the lack of CD ROM based materials for education based on Linux then I could change  
> the entire network over to Linux 'tomorrow' so to speak. 
> 

It is a shame that the materials are not authored in such a way as to have an
HTML front end.  This would give most of the advantages outlined above.  The
only problem then is that the materials are easily transferred to the Internet,
.. The arguement for this is not just for Linux, but also for next generation
(or are they here already?) Games Consoles which have CD and a browser, and
for operating systems which are not as common as Linux, such as BEOS, Macs etc.
The aim should be any application for any platform, which is becoming the goal
for the corporate world.