[VPM] July Perl Mongers meeting

Darren Duncan darren at DarrenDuncan.net
Mon Jul 5 17:14:53 CDT 2004


At 12:53 PM -0700 7/5/04, Peter Scott wrote:
>Okay folks, time to decide upon our July 20 meeting.  Who has 
>something they would like to discuss in front of the group, a topic 
>of any length related to Perl?

I think that I offered to do it, about 3 weeks ago.

Another email will be forthcoming on the details shortly.

In brief, though, I thought I would adapt a presentation I gave to 
the Victoria Macintosh Users Group 2 years ago about how to make a 
simple personal genealogy database using FileMaker Pro (similar 
target users as Access, but much better).

The adapted version will use SQLite as the database, and the 
interface will be a simple Perl program that uses DBI and 
DBD::SQLite.  As with the VMUG meeting, I will distribute the 
instructions/nodes (and code in this case) in advance (by posting 
them to this list; with VMUG it was in the monthly newsletter).  You 
will be able to try it out and experiment with modifications in 
advance.  Then at the meeting I will go over the instructions 
verbally and demonstrate the program working.  I will also field 
questions, plus have an interactive session where we can modify the 
database or make a different one and write working Perl code to 
manipulate it.

I thought of demonstrating my new database abstraction Perl library 
too, but that may make things too complicated for the meeting (its 
interface is considerably more verbose than DBI, plus it isn't 
mature).

Of course, for any live demonstrations to work, I will need access to 
the portable computer, and whoever brings it should make sure DBI and 
DBD::SQLite is installed and passes its tests.  SQLite is trivial to 
install, except for the C compiler requirement shared with DBI 
itself.  Newest perl 5.8 and others recommended, though my 
instructions should work with 5.6 too.

-- Darren Duncan



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