Programming the Perl DBI

Preface

The DBI is the standard database interface for the Perl programming language. The DBI is database-independent, which means that it can work with just about any database, such as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Access, MySQL, etc.

While we assume that readers of this book have some experience with Perl, we don’t assume much familiarity with databases themselves. The book starts out slowly, describing different types of databases and introducing the reader to common terminology.

This book is not solely about the DBI—it also concerns the more general subject of storing data in and retrieving data from databases of various forms. As such, this book is split into two related, but standalone, parts. The first part covers techniques for storing and retrieving data without the DBI, and the second, much larger part, covers the use of the DBI and related technologies.

Throughout the book, we assume that you have a basic grounding in programming with Perl and can put together simple scripts without instruction. If you don’t have this level of Perl awareness, we suggest that you read some of the Perl books listed in Section “Resources ".

Once you’re ready to read this book, there are some shortcuts that you can take depending on what you’re most interested in reading about. If you are interested solely in the DBI, you can skip Chapter 2 without too much of a problem. On the other hand, if you’re a wizard with SQL, then you should probably skip Chapter 3 to avoid the pain of us glossing over ...