On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Danny Arsenault wrote: > Now, the folks on the Lasso list claim that this kind of file-based DB > thing is done all the time in Perl, and now that we have Perl on OS X, > I wonder if I should try to develop this part of it in Perl rather > than learn MySQL, which seems a lot harder, and I'm not running NASA > over here. > > So please let me know if there are any good sites or resources about > this, or if I'd better just go with MySQL or maybe something else > entirely. > > (Oh yeah, I only know a tiny bit of Perl but I don't know any MySQL)
From my perspective, learning MySQL is not a difficult task, and knowing SQL of any sort is a good idea if you're planning on talking to databases (particularly if you're going to look at the DBI/DBD perl modules as a method for access). I've talked to MySQL both using perl and Cold Fusion before, and it behaves sensibly and generally stably; but then again, I'm primarily talking just home use here, and you seem to be talking in a different context. If I were tackling your project under the constraints implied, I'd abstract out the data storage and retrieval routines so I could swap in a set of subroutines that used a textfile or a set that talked to MySQL pretty easily, and then make a decision based on how easily I could make my peace with MySQL. But I've been writing perl for 6 years now. If you only know "a little perl", the most constructive advice I can give you is "stick to what you know", and keep things simple for now. Text file stuff will work more or less fine so long as you're dealing with it in a read-only context... you should try to avoid any situation that requires you to write out to that file through perl CGI scripts, that's just asking for pain if you don't have experience doing so already. There are a number of 'gotchas' in there, but I'll leave them out of this post for now. The next most constructive advice I can give you is, "learn more perl", and try picking up a basic understaning of SQL as it applies to MySQL -- MySQL _is_ worth getting friendly with, in my opinion, but may not be a "beginner" exercise (I apologize if this is an unfair categorization, but that's what 'a little perl' translates to in my brain). -- Fred Hicks <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
