Scripting language for DBAs
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2012 21:42:13 +0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <jlvl3l$3fq$2_at_solani.org>
For a very, very long time indeed, Perl ruled supreme among the languages to interface with a DB, be it Oracle, MySQL, Postgres or MS SQL. DBI was (and still is) a polished and useful interface which can do practically anything, from extracting query result and producing a quick little report using formats to complex things like copying Oracle to MySQL and doing it fast. Convenient things with Perl were:
- Easy handling of piping and the ability to open commands by using stuff like open(LPR,"|lpr")
- Multitude of modules available on CPAN
- Regular expressions, still unsurpassed in their versatility
- Availability of tools like perltidy or perlcritic and Perl syntax being well understood by both editors like Vim and operating systems like Emacs.
- The fact that everybody knew it.
I am now working for a company where everybody keeps telling that Perl is
"old", Perl doesn't have an object model, it has a zoo instead, and that I
should learn Python. I tried. God and Larry Ellison know that I have tried
and gave it my best. The problem is, however, that I don't need a fully OO
language to extract result of a query and mail it to my PHB. I need the
"format" command and MIME::Lite. I was able to write the script both in
Perl and Python and lo and behold, Perl was shorter and more elegant.
So, at risk that I am called a dinosaur, I am asking the respected colleagues from this group what do you you use? Is there anything even remotely akin to Perl "format" command in Python? Why is that guy van Rossum not on the FBI's most wanted list?
-- http://mgogala.freehostia.comReceived on Mon Apr 09 2012 - 16:42:13 CDT