Sams Teach Yourself MySQL in 21 Days, Second Edition

DBI Methods

With DBI installed, a number of methods are now available through Perl. Every Perl script that uses DBI must include the following line before it tries to use any DBI methods:

use DBI;

You can then invoke a DBI method using the general format:

$var = DBI->method ($parameters, ...)

or with reference to a handle as well as a method:

						$var = handle->method ($parameters, ...)

Note

It's important that you understand what is meant by the terms handle, object, and method.

A handle is a pointer variable that points to a data structure (or object). The object will typically be a database or a statement object (say a resultset from a query), and you can think of the handle as a convenient way of getting hold of that object when you want ...