Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Excuse my ignorance and please point me in the right direction. I'm just dealing with theory here, not code. I have access to either MSQL/PostgreSQL on a unix box. I feel most comfortable using a Win32 IDE and I want to develop some not-too-complex database applications. The apps would be low usage (< 20 users) with a much higher ratio of reads as opposed to writes.

Questions:

TIA

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Re: CGI/App vs. Win32/DBI Proxy?
by perrin (Chancellor) on Apr 27, 2002 at 06:28 UTC
    You don't need DBI::Proxy, and should not use it. Just use the standard DBD driver for the database you choose. They are already network-enabled.

    You didn't say what the CGI app would be an alternative to, but I'm guessing it's a GUI app using Tk or something. CGI apps are almost always simpler and faster to develop. Think about what your users would prefer.

    One advantage of going with CGI is that you can roll out a new version instantly, without going around to desktops and installing.

      Actually, there is a point to DBI::Proxy. And yes, it can be used hapilly for this example.

      The point is, that the windows box only needs perl and DBI installed. It doesn't need any of the database specific drivers. Instead, it uses DBI::Proxy to talk to a DBI::Proxy server, and that then uses the database specific libraries it has access to, to do the actual work.

      I've used this before, myself, as it meant that I didn't have to go around installing the Oracle client tools on Unix boxen where I wasn't given that much space...

      --
      Tommy
      Too stupid to live.
      Too stubborn to die.

        If you have a choice and you care about performance, it's better to install the real DBD driver on the client machine. It's much faster. It's also a much more common approach and thus better debugged, easier to get help with, etc. ActiveState provides pre-built packages through their PPM tool for most of the DBD drivers, including commercial ones like Oracle.
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