MySQL and mSQL

Chapter 10. Perl

The Perl programming language has gone from a tool primarily used by Unix systems administrators to the most widely used development platform for the World Wide Web. Perl was not designed for the web, but its ease of use and powerful text handling abilities have made it a natural for CGI programming. Similarly, when mSQL first entered the scene, its extremely small footprint and execution time were very attractive to web developers who needed to serve thousands of transactions a day. MySQL, with its enhanced speed and capabilities provided an even greater incentive for web developers. Therefore, it was only natural that a Perl interface to both MySQL and mSQL was developed that allowed the best of both worlds.

Note

At the time of this writing there are two interfaces between MySQL and mSQL and Perl. The original consists of Mysql.pm and Msql.pm, custom interfaces that work only with MySQL and mSQL, respectively. The other, newer, interface is a plug-in for the Database Independent (DBI) set of modules. DBI is an attempt to provide a common Perl API for all database accesses and enable greater behind-the-scenes portability. The DBI interface has become the most robust and standard, and the makers of MySQL recommend that all work be done using DBI as development of the Mysql.pm and Msql.pm modules has ceased. However, many legacy systems still use these modules, so both will be covered here.

DBI

The recommended method for accessing MySQL and mSQL databases from Perl ...