[Za-pm] Databases & Perl
De Villiers, Tielman
tvilliers at lastminute.com
Tue May 13 10:30:13 PDT 2008
> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of Jonathan McKeown
> Sent: 13 May 2008 13:48
> On Tuesday 13 May 2008 12:38, Anne Wainwright wrote:
> > Bear in mind that apart from my dos database I am fairly competant
> > with Paradox. For the uninitiated, this Windows app was originally
> > from Borland, later from Corel, and provides a database with
> > integrated design environment where you can add your buttons and
> > tables etc to a form and then add code to those objects to make it
go
> > the way you want. Far more powerful than Excel was. Design
> > of forms and reports is a snap.
Sound like MS Access to me.
> > Further confusion because so much of what I read (well, scan) on sql
> > databases refers to their use for internet applications and how to
> > view the data through your browser.
>
> Another way to develop an application which looks good and is
> easy to use with a mouse is to make it a Web application.
> This is very popular because the application now only needs a
> Web browser installed on the client rather than the whole
> application, and using HTML as your output format offloads a
> lot of the nonsense involved in managing the gory details of
> screen layout onto the browser.
Yep, this sounds like a good candidate for a webapp.
> > As you can see I am lost in the desert here. Any comments on how the
> > ground is laid out these days and which path I should take
> > are most welcome.
>
> If I were in your shoes, I would probably take the web
> approach: it gives you much more flexibility in the long run
> (can easily move from Windows to Linux etc). Having decided
> that, I would probably look at web frameworks, such as
> Catalyst for Perl (there are similar frameworks for other
> languages), which make the whole process less painful.
You might also want to look at Mason, a Perl-based templating engine.
>
> Bear in mind another of Perl's strengths is the DBI database
> interaction module.
Definitely.
I'd recommend to spend a lot of time thinking about your data and
how to convert to a relational database (PostgreSQL, MySQL or
even Oracle XE) and making the *database* your application. Then
you can play with CGI scripts/web frameworks/GUIs, knowing
all of these are just interfaces to your *real* application.
--tielman
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