Ehm Randal, what about something like co-existence ?? or even better co-operation?? between perl and php?? Perl might be even more dangerous if used by novices :-) But why not to allow somebody to use PHP if it's more suitable to him?? By the way, do you have an idea for me how to give an object (or refence to that) from a perl-script to a php-script? (I'm thinking about using PHP for the frontend but would prefer to let DBI do the good work in background) (ok, there would be something like xml possible, but that's "around three corners") Have a nice day! Ralf Buescher (not a monk yet, but still learning, and forced by the employer to use PHP )