If you haven't coded for mod_perl or fastCGI before you will have a little transition to deal with. You have to get used to writing cleaner code with lexicals and avoid slurping huge chunks of data into RAM. The docs should cover most of it.

I developed/support a system that uses PerlEx and yes, if you're stuck with IIS then I'd definitely recommend PerlEx. (Of course, just because you're stuck with NT/Win2k doesn't mean you have to use IIS - Apache/mod_perl is an option and definitely a more secure option).

Our configuration pretty much matches yours with NT/IIS and an Oracle database. In fact IIS and the database run on the same server - a dual Pentium 233 with 512MB of RAM. The system has thousands of registered users and given the age of the hardware, the performance is remarkable (although obviously the hardware would melt if all the users tried to log on at once).

I'd echo perrin's comment that (as with mod_perl) you need to be careful to write clean code and use globals where you mean something to be global and lexicals everywhere else. I wouldn't necesarily counsel against slurping lots of data into memory - when our interpreters start up they suck down the contents of a few static tables from the database and this data persists in global hashes. As a result, a number of key pages don't have to hit the database at all and the performance boost is amazing.

You can use ActivePerl directly in ASP pages without shelling out for PerlEx. Unfortunately, your code will be recompiled on every hit and you won't get the benefit of persistent database connections (except perhaps through ODBC connection pooling). PerlEx can also run in an ASP emulation mode - that might be useful if you started by prototyping in ASP.

Although PerlEx gives you the equivalent of mod_perl's Apache::Registry accelerated CGI environment, it does not give you the full power of mod_perl under Apache. For example, you can't get hooked into the request handler chain for custom authentication, redirection etc as you can with mod_perl.

Another reason I recommend PerlEx is that I think the fine folks at ActiveState do a fantastic job for Perl in general and buying a PerlEx license helps them stay in business.

Thanks for the info. I'm going to do a preliminary project to enangelize Perl a bit. Once I've got some buy-in and have done some work with PerlScript ASP, I'll be able to make some better evaluations. It's good to know that it's a good possible route.