[DFW.pm] Activities summary for last night's meeting

[Tommy Butler]

Hello Perl Mongers!

We had a good time at last night's meeting, and I hope that those of you
who couldn't make it out will be able to see us next month on the 10th.

I am sending out this email to let you know what we covered in the
meeting, and to talk about the activities we're hacking on.


      SQL Enlightenment

So first off, last night John Fields shared a presentation with the
group.  It was database-centric.  He demonstrated use of the SQLyog tool
and how it is used.  To make things more fun, I created system accounts
on our group's Linux server, set up database access, and got everyone
connected to a live database.  I should say by "everyone" I mean
"everyone who wanted to do so".  Some folks connected with SQLyog, while
others used the MySQL shell in an SSH terminal.  Collectively we used
both Windows and Linux laptops to do this.

Together we discussed database concepts and database design.  We talked
about how the database is used in the "SpamMeNot" mail server running at
spammenot.com and examined some example tables.  We were lucky to have
Mark (a first-timer) with us who is an oracle DBA.  We had the privilege
of learning a lot of awesome things from Mark as well.


      Perl As A Service

I also briefly presented some source code that provides an example
daemonized Perl server with Net::Server::PreFork, dispatching incoming
requests to an "embedded" Catalyst engine.  You probably noticed the
email I fired off last night with the github link.  That was a link to
the git repository for the code I shared.  Please have a look at the
master branch of the repository for that code: 
https://github.com/dfwperl/spammenot


      Homework -- Independent Hacking

The code serves as a starting point and a proof of concept that will
evolve into the full-blown Perl server we are planning to build that
utilizes Catalyst and DBIx::Class.  The code is littered with comments
that serve as a learning exercise to the reader, posing questions and
pointing out mistakes to be corrected.  I purposely put some mistakes
into the code for the group as a learning tool.  I challenge those who
are interested to fix those mistakes and commit your changes back to the
github repo.

That concludes this month's meeting notes.  Watch for more email soon
about some cool news for the group (hint: does anybody else like tasty
food with their Perl?).

--Tommy Butler
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