According to this book, which IMHO is an excellent guide for programming Perl using databases, Win32::ODBC tries to be an interface for ODBC, while DBI tries to be an abstraction layer on top of any database.

That said, I've never encountered real performance gains in one over the other. DBI is excellent when you need the ability to connect your software to a different database... With DBI this is often as simple as changing the connection string (and perhaps some simple changes to the SQL statements).

In my experience, using DBI has been simpler than Win32::ODBC, and the applications can be developed and run in multiple platforms. This of course would be irrelevant if your target platform is always going to be WinNT.

In reply to Re: DBI vs. Win32::ODBC by fokat
in thread DBI vs. Win32::ODBC by DaWolf

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