Discussion Topic:

This week, we are starting to access Oracle database from your PHP program. The communication between your PHP program and Oracle database is made possible by OCI8, which is the core technology we will focus on for our discussion.

Questions:

1. What is OCI8?
   
   
2. Provide one example of functions provided by OCI8 library. Explain the details of the function of your choice including syntax and its roles (what you can accomplish by using the library function?) Please note that I like to ask each student address a different function. In other words, I do not want to see anyone repeating the same function if the function has already been described by others.
   

 

 

Online Discussion Policy:

1. Discussion Board is the main vehicle for the entire class to have close interactions.  Students are required to actively participate in all discussions.  The total weight of discussion accounts for 25% of the total grade (15% for Class Time Discussion and 10% for Weekly Geeks Corner).

2. Students are supposed to complete discussions by the due date.  Due date policy applies to both discussion, definitely.

3. There will be two major categories of questions to be discussed: instructor-posted, and student-posted.  Students are required to participate in BOTH discussions.

4. Weekly Discussion (Class Time): The instructor-posted questions are intended to facilitate and verify your understanding of the related subject.  The following guidelines will be followed for evaluation.  Each question will have a total of 100 achievable points for the week.

a. Responsiveness to the right question (hit the point). (15 points)

b. Clarity of response. (10 points)

c. Completeness of response. (15 points)

d. Support for response from reading or other resources. (15 points)

e. Correct sentence structure and spelling.  Please use complete sentences and correct English grammar/spelling. By the way, I do not like the language used in text message such as "how r u?"(10 points)

f. Professionalism or Netiquette (no bad languages).

g. Reply to at least one other students' discussions.  (10 points)

h. You have to read at least 50% of the messages posted. (10 points)

i. Do not use such expressions as "I do not know." Offer your insight or suggestions.

j. Have a sense of humor (5 points)

k. Timely bonus: The first 5 students responding to the posted question will receive bonus points in the scale of 10, 8, 6, 4, 2. The first one will receive 10, and the fifth one will have 2 points.