Of course, Joseph, it isn't the right way to fix it -- and when I posted the bug report (which, naturally, I did immediately: http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-29873 ) I hope that I specified properly that this workaround, and the bug, was specific to use with MS SQL Server.
With the caveat (again) that I am not a PHP developer and trying desperately not to become one...
IMHO the problem may very well not be in the lesson module. I saw this in the pagetypes\essay.php file, and noted (in the bug report) that it might be okay or it might not:
define("LESSON_PAGE_ESSAY", "10");
-- in PHP, it may be okay that this is defined as a string, and it may be that mod\lesson\essay.php has access to this definition in the other file. I am trying not to look too closely, because I don't have the tools or skills.
If it *is* okay, then the issue is probably in whatever database management code in moodle is specific to MS SQL Server handling, and represent a datatype conversion problem -- in which case the fix would not be anywhere near this code and would be transparent to you and the lesson module. I expect that a Moodle core developer will know that instantly, but neither Rachael nor I could have known that when we posted to this forum.
I do hope that providing the hack in the bug report points the developer to where the problem actually this. This (beyond getting our installation to work properlly) makes -- also IMHO -- a more valuable bug report than just an accurate description of environment and steps to repro -- which of course I provided as well. <shrug>
>L<