I'm asking because I am not sure what kind of person we'll need to hire (ASP? Sitecore? Angular? JQuery) to implement the following for us:
Our school is looking to make data on courses (JSON format, about 600 courses) available as an “online catalog.” The static info (programs information, resources, etc.) will be hosted in Sitecore 7.
We’d like to see the online course catalog closely integrated with the rest of the site, so we’re looking for best approaches on how to do that.
Some manipulation of the JSON data is required: course detail pages should be simple enough, but we’ll also need to have course listings (not necessarily displaying all 600 courses at once, in one long list, but segmented by programs, class formats & locations, etc) as well as a “course search” functionality.
Would Sitecore do that well enough out-of-the-box, or would it be better/easier to go with something like Angular JS on top of Sitecore?
Please ask me for additional info if I had left something important out or if anything is unclear.
I agree with Dijkgraaf comment but to provide you with answer; Sitecore is suitable for your requirements but is a framework which means out of the box it won't meet your requirement so you will need a Developer who knows Sitecore and by extension .NET (Sitecore is built on .NET).
These developers will also know how to work with JSON, most likely serving it up from Sitecore via a .NET technology called Web API. The JSON can then be manipulated with Javascript or AngularJS. It is not as common for Sitecore developers to be familiar with AngularJS however.