Re: How important is Perl for a dba ???

It is not that *important* to learn Perl to be a DBA. There are other fine scripting languages out there. But I feel that it is a good skill to learn. Knowing Perl would be half the battle to an answer I posted to your previous thread about charting....

I like Perl for the following reasons:

• it is a very good scripting language with lots of power
• you can use the DBI module to interface your script directly with the database.
• it is platform independent. Why write a shell script for your Unix databases and then write the same script for your Windoze NT/2000 databases? Write one script in Perl and you are done!
• it is database independent. I often hear the question "How do I move data from Sybase (or pick another vendor) to Oracle?". And the requestor typically wants to do this cheaply. The answer is Perl. Load the database drivers for both Oracle & Sybase. Have your Perl program connect to the Sybase db, pull the data, and push the data to the Oracle db.

You may find that you don't like Perl. Or you may find that you love it.

But here is what is important for you to learn to be a good DBA. You need to learn (if you haven't already done so) how to code in a scripting language for your platform(s). If you only even need to administer databases on Unix, then shell scripting may be all you need. But if you are like the countless other DBAs out there, you have a mix of platforms and Perl can help you stop re-inventing the wheel.

HTH,
Brian

> Anurag Minocha wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I was wondering how important it is for a DBA to learn perl.
> Also what are the advantages perl has over other languages. I mean
> what is that makes perl a preferred language for database scipting and
> other stuff.
>
> Thanks
> Anurag
>
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-- 
========================================
Brian Peasland
Raytheons Systems at
  USGS EROS Data Center
These opinions are my own and do not
necessarily reflect the opinions of my 
company!
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