When applying for a tenure-track academic position in the US right after my PhD (in the US too), is it a good idea to ask for a letter of recommendation from a professor in my graduate school with whom I took a class where I got good grades while showing a strong interest (genuine interest), then later on served as a TA for that class?
I haven't done any research project with him though, but we get along well: he is one of the professors I appreciate the most both intellectually and personally, I would have chosen him without any doubt as advisor if I was in his area. He is well-respected in his field (say in the top 20, if you want some ranking). His area of research is a bit different from mine but useful for my research: he works on database management systems while I do machine learning, so there are some very interesting connections such as large-scale machine learning / data analysis (~aka. "big data"), query optimization, etc.