Many standard Talis reports have been written in Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language). This is a third party programming language, which allows scope for local customisation of formats and select criteria.
Perl scripts are run from the UNIX command prompt, providing management information and business functionality reporting. Significantly, Perl reports will often make changes within the database rather than simply extracting information. For this reason the scripts that update the database must be run against the live database rather than a copy on the MIS machine.
A series of Talis Perl reports are shipped as standard (such as overdue letters and printed orders) with the Talis LMS. Perl also allows scope for local customisation of formats and select criteria. Talis scripts written in Perl are recognisable by their .pl file extension.
Talis can provide standard or tailored training in Perl. For further information on, please visit http://www.talis.com/training.
For more information about Perl, refer to the O'Reilly Official Perl Home Page.