I think you'll find that Perl can do any and all of what you asked about, but you're asking about pretty general topics. If you can be more specific it's likely you'll get more specific answers.
Since you ask here on the Perl *DBI* mailing list, in my experience, which includes (not to say I'm an expert in these ;-) Perl, PHP, Python, some ASP, no other tool in that list has the mature database independent interface that Perl does. This is an excellent tool that allows you to write database independent code for any application that interfaces with a database. The major "pro" of DBI is that if you write your apps for "Oracle" (DBD::Oracle), that sometime down the road if you change your database to DB2, that your code will not have to change much - assuming that you don't take advantage of oracle-specific functionality provided by Oracle. I don't know Coldfusion or Java so I can't offer any insight there. HTH. Hardy Merrill >>> "MCMULLIN, NANCY" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/09/04 11:26AM >>> Generic question to the group... It's been requested that we expand our Perl / Database / Web development to do more advanced things, such as database maintenance, reporting and monitoring (over the web). Would you recommend continuing to use strictly Perl for all of this, or jump to another tool, such as Coldfusion, PHP, Java or something else? I guess I'm wondering how easy or hard it would be to develop everything using only Perl. Thanks for the advice. Nancy
