Thanks FloydATC. Oracle does provide its own perl modules. I guess they are re-used and as you said, not re-invent the wheel. It makes sense but why install this huge Oracle client when the oracle specific perl modules can be packaged in some other form. Such a perl module won't be more than a few megs.
I come from the Java world and very new to perl, so its very likely that the question above makes no sense. Just that my curiosity prevails.