Anne Toal wrote:

>On all these lists we can't rely on the members subscribing and unsubscribing themselves. They should be updated based on feeds provided from another computer, such as human resources feeds. Having had no experience doing this, I wanted to check with others who have. Is feeding list membership through a database connection difficult to do? What level of programming skill is needed? What kinds of landmines are waiting for someone attempting this?
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We've done this for years. We use MS-SQL DTS Jobs to populate the lists
(although you could just as easily use a program) from data exported
from our student and personnel databases. If you don't want people to be
able to remove themselves from the list (usually a futile task because
the DTS jobs just add them back) you need to code a LISTSERV exit to
block self removal from those lists. If you want people to be able to
get off certain lists but still have the list auto populated, you'll
need the exit and a web page interface (easiest - though you could code
a full application) that populates some file that the DTS job will use
so it doesn't automatically add them back. One big gotcha - do expect
complaints from your client base - even when mandated from on high
clients complain when added to a list from which they cannot remove
themselves.