Open Source Web Development with LAMP: Using Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl, and PHP

5.3. Database Independent Interface

Running MySQL commands from the shell is well and good the first 12 times it has to be done. After that, the typical lazy programmer starts thinking of ways to automate the process. Here, the answer is Perl and the DataBase Independent interface (DBI). DBI enables one to write programs to automate database maintenance and to write other scripts to interface with MySQL.

DBI is a Perl module that provides methods to manipulate SQL databases. With DBI, one can connect to a database within a Perl script and issue all kinds of queries, including SELECT, INSERT, and DELETE. For now, we create Perl scripts that can be run from the shell. Later, we’ll use CGI, mod_perl, Embperl, Mason, and PHP to hook database independent ...