Mike,

Assuming you get the DBMS interface working, you should be able to use
Listserv in the manner you describe.  We do exactly that here at HMS.
Our master faculty list has 14521 subscribers, which isn't as large as
yours, but Listserv works quite well for this.  We implemented our
DB-driven list using views on a master table (derived from PeopleSoft HR
data) which is stored in an Oracle database.  We created a table for
this purpose, so we included the Options column.  One issue we have had
using views is that the Listserv server grinds to a halt when the views
are accessed; users are stuck waiting for the web pages to come back,
and the log shows very long wait times for the response from the
database.  The messages do go out however, so this is a relatively minor
issue.

If you would like more information, contact me off-list and I'll try to
help.

Melissa Kenny
 
IIS Administrator
Harvard Medical School IT
107 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Center for Educational Technology
Boston, MA 02115



-----Original Message-----
From: LISTSERV site administrators' forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of mjn
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2006 12:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [LSTSRV-L] Compiling Listserv 15.0

I am aware of Maestro (the UofMn already owns Lyris) but the problem
with these solutions (I cannot accurately speak to Maestro but it
appears I am mostly correct from the promo materials) is that we still
intend to use these DBMS-maintained lists as discussion lists; Lyris
(and Maestro?) does not work well in that way.

The reason for the database connectivity is to drive the list population
with our Peoplesoft data and avoid most of the human element in
maintaining subscriber lists for the myriad collections of people that
need to be accurately maintained in our enterprise (e.g.  
A discussion list for all tenured faculty, or all staff, etc; as you can
imagine with 80k+ people in the organization, these lists are huge and
no department is lord over these wide swaths of people, having people do
this management in listserv is silly when we've got the data elsewhere
and already maintained by business process there).

We still have a need for lists that individuals can control their
subscriptions to and for lists that contain people outside out
enterprise, so we had hoped that listserv might be agile enough to cover
all aspects of our discussion/distro list needs--the marketing/ tracking
part is covered by Lyris at the moment and gets much less use than these
discussion lists.

It looks as though all indications are that Listserv's DBMS will not
work in the way I had hoped. Is there a way to dump a text file to
listserv on the back side periodically with a list of subscribers (I'm
looking for a file to overwrite or an interface that would be
susceptible to perl scripting on the listserv server itself and would
like to avoid the email/web interface)?

Thanks for all of the responses!

--
_______________________________________________
Mike Neuharth, BA, LPIC-1
Email/UNIX System Administrator
Internet Services, University of Minnesota
===============================================
"What is important, it seems to me, is not so much to defend a culture
whose existence has never kept a man from going hungry, as to extract,
from what is called culture, ideas whose compelling force is identical
with that of hunger."  -Antonin Artaud


On Dec 6, 2006, at 11:14 AM, Francoise Becker wrote:

> On 6 Dec 2006 at 10:56, mjn wrote:
>
>> I guess the way I envisioned us implementing the DBMS support was 
>> this: we provide listserv to our clients, they create tables or views

>> on their systems specifically (one per list or one table for all 
>> lists), they provide us with connection/credential information and we

>> configure the DBMS part for them. In production, they make changes to

>> the subscription for a given list by changing the contents of the 
>> table/view. I was thinking of listserv using the DBMS sources as 
>> read-only as opposed to making changes to the table.
>
> I recommend that you take a serious look at LISTSERV Maestro. It may 
> be able to save you a LOT of work and hassle.
>
> --
> Francoise Becker
>
> There is only one LISTSERV(R) -- the product that launched the email 
> list communication industry in 1986. To discover the story behind 
> LISTSERV, visit:
> http://www.lsoft.com/corporate/20anniversary.asp