Re: Perl and Oracle

On Sun, 09 Apr 2006 02:47:57 +0200, Matthias Hoys wrote:

> Can anyone recommend me a good book or online documentation regarding Perl
> and Oracle (10g) ?

As for books, there aren't many. There is one written by DBA, architect and self-proclaimed Perl evangelist named Jared Still:

Perl for Oracle DBAs
By Andy Duncan, Jared Still
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
ISBN: 0596002106 Also, unavoidable book is a book which explains the DBI interface:

Programming the Perl DBI: Database Programming with Perl By Alligator Descartes, Alistair Carty, Tim Bunce, Linda Mui

Publisher: O'Reilly Media
ISBN: 1565926994 There is also a short introduction on: http://thomas.eibner.dk/oracle/dbi as well as the online reference at:
http://search.cpan.org/~timb/DBI-1.50/DBI.pm

You must be aware, however, that Perl DBI driver to work with Oracle is extremely bad software which doesn't support things like the array interface or direct loads. I asked the author and the only answer was that he's not paid for that. Perl cannot be used to load large files into the database or download large query results to the file system. DBD::Oracle is a mere toy which works best with tables like SCOTT.EMP. It was once stated here that Tim Bunce, the author of Perl is more inclined to develop things for open source databases lie Postgres or MySQL then to fix the driver for Oracle. I happen to believe that is the case, despite the vigorous denial. The development of the DBD::Oracle was recently taken over by the Pythian Group from Canada, but they haven't done much about it, they haven't published the statement of direction nor have they done any good to the driver. All that you can find on CPAN is this:

"Changes in DBD-Oracle 1.17 (svn rev 2487) 7th February 2006 ^

  NOTE: With this release of DBD::Oracle pythian.com (http://www.pythian.com)   are taking on the role of lead maintainer - with my support and gratitude.   John Scoles at pythian.com is now the man in the hot seat for support and   maintenance!"

This is still not an official driver, the official driver is still the one written by Tim Bunce and installed by cpan utility:

$ perl -e 'use DBD::Oracle; print $DBD::Oracle::VERSION,"\n";' 1.16

There still isn't any timetable, still no support for array interface or any meaningful information whether it's planned and, if it is, for when. Oracle and Perl DBI should be avoided at all cost. Why don't you use PHP or Python instead? ADOdb is certainly much better software then DBD::Oracle and I hear that the same is true for cxOracle, Python module to work with Oracle. The low quality of DBD::Oracle was the primary reason for me to learn PHP. DBD::Oracle is an example which provides ammunition to the managers who are afraid of open source software and, as such, a disservice to both Oracle and Perl communities.

-- 
http://www.mgogala.com