On 9/16/2005 8:24 AM, Jean Bédard wrote:
> 
> I thought of eventually using Oracle for the smaller lists (classes) which 
 > are less used than the global and faculty lists, so I'm concerned by what
 > you call "limited database support"; can you elaborate? Thanks!

LISTSERV does not support the use of SQL queries against existing tables to 
identify owners, editors, or subscribers. LISTSERV requires write access to
a table which has one column per list. We create nearly 8000 course-related
lists and over 4000 other administrative lists each semester. In this
environment, the "one column per list" restriction simply does not scale.

We update course-related lists nightly, using scripts which process a file
containing course, instructor, and student data from the registration system.
The other administrative lists are also updated nightly, however, one of our
database gurus wrote a script which issues SQL queries to identify the members
of the administrative groups, and formats the output as a series of LISTSERV
bulk-add jobs.

I have no doubt that some sites are using LISTSERV DBMS support to manage
lists, but it simply will not meet our needs.

For detailed information about LISTSERV DBMS support, see Chapter 4 of the
LISTSERV Developer's Guide.

--
Paul Russell
Senior Systems Administrator
OIT Messaging Services Team
University of Notre Dame