computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, the Perl DBI (Perl Database Interface) offers a standardized way for

programmers A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates ...

using the

Perl Perl is a family of two High-level programming language, high-level, General-purpose programming language, general-purpose, Interpreter (computing), interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it ...

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

to embed

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

communication within their programs. The latest DBI module for Perl from CPAN can run on a range of

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

History

In September 1992, Buzz Moschetti, creator of interperl, observed that several bespoke compiled extensions of perl (at the time, perl version 4 or more commonly perl4) featuring connectivity to popular SQL-based databases had emerged, namely Interbase, Informix, Oracle, and Sybase. He engaged the authors of these bespoke versions with the idea of creating a common interface layer to the databases separate from the specifics of the underlying implementations. Tim Bunce took the lead and began specifying what would become the DBI module in 1994 upon the release of perl5 which eliminated the need for bespoke compilation in favor of dynamic, invocation time loading of libraries (modules). the Perl community maintains DBI as a

CPAN The Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) is a repository of over 250,000 software modules and accompanying documentation for 39,000 distributions, written in the Perl programming language by over 12,000 contributors. ''CPAN'' can denote eith ...

module in accordance with the

open-source model Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. DBD (DataBase Driver) modules serve as

plug-in Plug-in, plug in or plugin may refer to: * Plug-in (computing) is a software component that adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. ** Audio plug-in, adds audio signal processing features ** Photoshop plugin, a piece of softwar ...

s to DBI, allowing programmers to use near-database-independent SQL code in their applications. Programmers can also use the DBI and DBD modules indirectly using one of the object-relational mappers available for Perl, such as DBIx::Class, for more database-independent code with no need to write SQL.

Features

The DBI and DBD Perl packages allow Perl programmers to access many database environments in a standard way. The system implements each supported database environment as a DBD driver, in much the same way that hardware devices from multiple vendors can operate with different

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

platforms. Prospective DBD users can download DBD implementations from the Internet. DBD implementations exist for proprietary products such as

IBM Db2 Db2 is a family of data management products, including database servers, developed by IBM. It initially supported the relational model, but was extended to support object–relational features and non-relational structures like JSON and ...

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The wor ...

and for free-software databases such as

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the mo ...

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

, Firebird and

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

Similar projects

PHP PHP is a General-purpose programming language, general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementati ...

5 has a similar interface called PHP Data Objects (PDO). Java's

Java Database Connectivity Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) is an application programming interface (API) for the programming language Java, which defines how a client may access a database. It is a Java-based data access technology used for Java database connectivity. ...

(JDBC) is also similar.

References

External links

*
DBI module documentation
on MetaCPAN
DBD drivers
on MetaCPAN Perl modules {{free-software-stub