SPUG: Update friendly community site in PERL

[Colin Meyer]

Brian,

I have developed many applications with a web front end and a database
backend. Currently I am playing with Maypole (http://maypole.perl.org/). 

There are several mature Perl frameworks for web apps (e.g. Mason,
CGI::Application). I like Maypole because it closely integrates two of
my favorite modules: Template Toolkit (aka TT or TT2) and Class::DBI.

The downside to Maypole is that it is relatively new. This means that
problems are being ironed out on a regular basis, and that it lacks some
of the features of a mature system, such as easy debugging. It is under
active development, and the mailing list is active, so hopefully it
will continue to improve. The current direction seems to be bug fixing
without API changes.

CGI::Application is far more mature, but it integrates more tightly with
HTML::Template than with TT. HTML::Template is great; it just isn't my
preferred templating module. I feel that it would be relatively easy to
develop with Class::DBI and CGI::Application. Here's a good intro
article on CGI::App: http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2001/06/05/cgi.html

HTH,
-Colin.