Advice on education needed for Java, C++, Oracle Web development?

Hi ,

I just found this group and from reading the posts i can see there are a lot of experienced people posting here. I'm wondering if I might ask for some advice.

I've been programming C++ multimedia educational games for about 4 years now (3 years DOS, 1 year Win32). I'm trying to move my career into the area of developing database backed / driven web sites such as e-commerce and other functional and application intensive sites, with an emphasis on server side and back end development as opposed to front end interface development.

I keep seeing C++, Java, SQL, Oracle, and (UNIX / NT) popping up as desired skills for web development positions although I'm not exactly sure how these all fit together yet. I also sometimes see calls for client / server backgrounds, but first, I'm not exactly clear what this means other than a local client side program accessing a central database server, and secondly I don't know how crucial this background is for building web sites such as the above.

I have two specific questions, and beyond that would greatly appreciate any and all advice, links, references, etc. in how to best prepare myself for and move into this field.

The questions:
A local university offers a class on distributed processing (UNIX based) with the basic description of "learning to assign parts of programs to different processors and / or different machines". I'm wondering if this class is the same or similar to a client / server class (if I can find one), and also how important, if at all, a class like this or a client / server class would be as a background in this field?

I'm also wondering how deeply I would need to know UNIX if I'm using C++, Java, SQL, Oracle, etc. on that platform? Would it be just as an operating system or would I need to know shell and/or other UNIX specific programming?

My background in a nutshell (besides C++): I picked up HTML and JavaScript (front end skills) on my own. Currently practicing SQL from a book. I'm also taking a 400 level Java class (C++ is a prerequisite) at a local university that begins in a couple of weeks. I took dBASE(IV) and UNIX in school but haven't really used them in a work setting.

Any help and guidance would be enormously appreciated.

Thanks,
Lon Received on Tue Aug 17 1999 - 14:01:26 CDT