DBperl/oraperl

[Suppes, Patrick]

I have been using the Perl DBI interface to access an Oracle 8 instance for a
while now and I have no complaints.  The machine I am using is some variation
from SUN, running a Solaris OS.  

I think the OraPerl interface is dead.  In Perl's early days, the various
database vendors wrote their own extentions to Perl, enabling Perl to access
their implementation of SQL.  OraPerl was the permutation for Oracle.

DBI is/was an attempt to create a "standard" set of interfaces without regard to
the underlying database (DBD, in Perl lingo).  For my limited experience, I have
been able to do whatever I needed using DBI.  The interface is faster than I
expected.

The unix man page for DBI contains enough information to get the process
rolling.  A couple of high-points.

A)  When connecting, set RaiseError=1 .  This way all your SQL commands that
fail are forced to raise exceptions, protecting you from that one time when you
"forget" to check the return codes.  The error text is in Oracle-ese, which, if
not clear, is clearer than the single numeric error code numbers.

B)  If you are doing updates, you probably want to set AutoCommit=0 .  This
turns off the feature where changes are automatically committed, and allows you
to do your own transaction control.

Patrick Suppes
Ph: (303) 538 2445




> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Phil Hildebrand [SMTP:phil at sysmgrs.com]
> Sent:	Friday, October 08, 1999 1:35 PM
> To:	BPML
> Subject:	DBperl/oraperl
> 
> 
> I havn't done much with perl and databases, but I was wondering a few
> things...
> 
>  What's the best interface to use with Oracle and Perl?  It sounds like
> oraperl only works with perl4.
> 
> We have an Oracle 8 database running on Linux, and want to start
> converting some perl/gdbm based apps to perl/oracle.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> ============================
> Phil Hildebrand
> Sr. Consultant
> Unix Systems Managers, Inc.
> Phone: 303-797-6477
> ============================