[VPM] database frontend

[Darren Duncan]

On Tue, 18 Mar 2003, nkuipers wrote:
> I've got a Postgres database with about 20,000 entries from the salmonid
> genome project, mined from about 80,000+ sequences as being significant, by my
> Perl software. The database is very very simple at this point. What I need to
> do is throw up a correspondingly simple but effective web frontend for
> querying. I did a supersearch at PerlMonks on "database frontend" and from
> this I extracted the following tools for doing this:

Ah yes, databases, websites, and perl: 3 of my favorite things.

> Are these tools (other than DBI/CGI, I would imagine they are
> involved) still the defacto standard? I've never done anything like this,
> including zero LWP or CGI experience. What are your suggestions? Any ideas
> welcome.

DBI and CGI are the two single most popular CPAN downloads as I recall
which aren't part of the Perl core (CGI is bundled with the standard
distribution, though).  As such, if you use these you can probably get
help from more people than if you use anything else.  That said, if your
interface is very simple, these should be quite enough to meet your needs,
and you wouldn't have to write much code yourself.  Whereas, if your
interface would be quite complicated, you might want to look at some other
options or write more code.  LWP is for writing web clients, which isn't
what you are doing, and Mason is designed for large complicated server
applications, and would be overkill for your uses.

Perhaps if you outlined briefly what kind of "screens" you want your web
interface to have.  Eg: what would be presented to a user initially, what
they would do there, what should result, etc.  Then we/I could better help
you.

-- Darren DUncan