“ I think everyone had a good opportunity to ask questions about databases and programming in general from a lot of different people who have an interest in this topic. We also learned from Stephen who showed us step by step how to use a templating program, Smarty, for converting macros (of a sort) in language that can be used by PHP to update fields on a website. Of particular note was the idea that you can custom make a tag, such as "sqlserver", which could connect your website's page displays with updated information in a database. A discussion followed this note about whether a template tool should ever be imbued with logical control facilities. Stephen said extensions like this, although not really supported by Smarty's distributor, could be the best practical solution to some problems. I asked about XML. Stephen adroitly acknowledged that XLST's functions and those of PHP were quite similar. Dossy pointed out that XML is a more robust modeling language that deals with objects (it ain't just strings). ”