Learning MySQL

Chapter 17. Using Perl with MySQL

Now that you can find your way about Perl, let’s see how you can use it to connect to a MySQL server. In this chapter, we look at how we can use the Perl scripting language to connect to a MySQL database and interchange data with it. We create command-line clients to import data into a database, and to query a database and display results.

The Perl DBI module supports a variety of database drivers. Naturally, we’re interested in the MySQL driver for this book, but there are others. Theoretically, you should be able to simply change the driver referenced by your script to get your script to work with another supported database management system, such as Oracle. In practice, however, you’ll need to put in some additional thought into writing your scripts so that you don’t use MySQL-specific constructs such as SHOW TABLES that won’t necessarily work on other database servers. Of course, this isn’t an issue if you’re certain you won’t ever change databases, but it’s a good idea to think carefully about how your application is likely to be used in a few years’ time.