PERL is an acronym for 'Practical Extraction and Report Language'. Perl is available on each and every operating system and hardware platform in the world. You can use Perl on Windows95/NT, Apple Macintosh iMac, all flavors of Unix (Solaris, HPUX, AIX, Linux, Irix, SCO etc..), mainframe MVS, desktop OS/2, OS/400, Amdahl UTS and many others. Perl runs EVEN on many unpopular or generally-unknown operating systems and hardware!! So do not be surprised if you see perl running on a very rarely used operating system. You can imagine the vast extent of the user base and developer base of Perl. Perl language has a very long life just like "C" language, and Perl will be in use for thousands of years in the future! Perl runs 10 times faster than Java and sometimes faster than even "C". Java is a very complex system with virtual machine and interpreter which makes it extremely slow, unstable and unreliable. Perl is very simple, fast and object oriented.
Perl interface for PostgreSQL is included in the distribution of PostgreSQL. Check in src/pgsql_perl5 directory.
The Perl Database Interface (DBI) is a database access Application Programming Interface (API) for the Perl Language. The Perl DBI API specification defines a set of functions, variables and conventions that provide a consistent database interface independent of the actual database being used. The Database Drivers (Perl DBI) initiative has standardized the interface to a number of commercial database engines, so that you can move from, say, Oracle to PostgreSQL with a minimum of effort.
Before you install DBD PostgreSQL (Driver) you must install DBI. Get DBI driver from
Get DBD-Pg from below
There are a few information sources on DBI.
POD documentation: PODs are chunks of documentation usually embedded within perl programs that document the code ``in place'', providing an useful resource for programmers and users of modules. POD for DBI and drivers is beginning to become more commonplace, and documentation for these modules can be read with the following commands.
The POD for the DBI Specification can be read with the command
$ perldoc DBI
Users of the Oraperl emulation layer bundled with DBD::Oracle, may
read up on how to program with the Oraperl interface by typing:
$ perldoc Oraperl
Users of the DBD::mSQL module may read about some of the private
functions and quirks of that driver by typing:
$ perldoc DBD::mSQL
The Frequently Asked Questions is also available as
POD documentation. Read this by typing:
$ perldoc DBI::FAQ
POD in general - Information on writing POD, and on the philosophy of POD in
general, can be read by typing:
$ perldoc perlpod
See also -
The mailing lists that users may participate in are:
The DBI and DBD::Oracle Win32 ports are now a standard part of DBI, so, downloading DBI of version higher than 0.81 should work fine. You can access Microsoft Access and SQL-Server databases from DBI via ODBC. Supplied with DBI-0.79 (and later) is DBI 'emulation layer' for the Win32::ODBC module. It's called DBI::W32ODBC. You will need the Win32::ODBC module.
PERL CLINIC : The Perl Clinic can arrange commercial support contracts for Perl, DBI, DBD::Oracle and Oraperl. Support is provided by the company with whom Tim Bunce, author of DBI, works. For more information on their services, please see :
See the section - Testing Perl PostgreSQL interface