XML and Perl

Introduction to the Perl Database Interface

Throughout the book, I’ve mentioned a number of reasons for the success of XML—platform independence, easy to read, easy to adapt, widespread acceptance, and a number of other reasons. Unfortunately, the same statements don’t apply to the RDBMSs used today. All the major RDBMSs are based on proprietary code and usually include a proprietary programming interface. The problem with proprietary interfaces (in addition to the learning curve) is that they can tie your application to a particular RDBMS. The Perl DBI was developed by Tim Bunce to address these problems; it provides a consistent, platform-independent API to a large number of the most popular RDBMSs. In the next section, we’ll take a ...