You can also generate a PDF file and use a number of programs, including Acrobat Reader to send that to a printer (this gives you also more or less complete control over the page layout).

I found this article on stackoverflow for the acroread command line switches.

On linux, you can also send the PDF directly to the printer queue using the lp command. I strongly suspect there is something similar on Windows, and if not, you should be able to use the acrobat method described above.

Here's a simple example from my vast DarkPAN repo. In this program i use a pre-designed label (also a PDF file), fill in the text fields from the database and send that to a printer queue (which in this case prints to a PTouch label printer).

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#---AUTOPRAGMASTART---
use 5.012;
use strict;
use warnings;
use diagnostics;
use mro 'c3';
use English qw( -no_match_vars );
use Carp;
our $VERSION = 0.996;
#---AUTOPRAGMAEND---

use Maplat::Helpers::ConfigLoader;
use Sys::Hostname;
use Time::HiRes qw(sleep usleep);
use DBI;
use PDF::Report;

use Maplat::Helpers::Logo;
our $APPNAME = "PTouch";
MaplatLogo($APPNAME, $VERSION);

my $ps_appname = lc($APPNAME);
$ps_appname =~ s/[^a-z]+/_/gio;
$0 = $ps_appname;

my $configfile = shift @ARGV;
print "Loading config file $configfile\n";

my $config = LoadConfig($configfile,
                    ForceArray => [ 'module', 'redirect', 'menu', 'vie
+w', 'userlevel', 'rootfile' ],);

my $dbh = DBI->connect($config->{dburl}, $config->{dbuser}, $config->{
+dbpassword}, {AutoCommit => 0})
        or croak("can't connect to database");

my $cycleStartTime = time;
while(1) {
    $0 = $ps_appname . " working";
    my $workCount = printLabel();
    $0 = $ps_appname . " idle";

    my $tmptime = time;
    my $workTime = $tmptime - $cycleStartTime;
    if($workTime < 0) {
        $workTime = 0;    # Handle winter->summer time switch
    }
    my $sleeptime = $config->{mincycletime} - $workTime;
    if($sleeptime > 0) {
        print "** Fast cycle ($workTime sec), sleeping for $sleeptime 
+sec **\n";
        sleep($sleeptime);
        print "** Wake-up call **\n";
    } else {
        print "** Cycle time $workTime sec **\n";
    }
    $cycleStartTime = time;
}


sub printLabel {
    my $workCount = 0;
    
    my @labels;
    my $selsth = $dbh->prepare_cached("SELECT * FROM ptouch_queue
                                      WHERE printer_name = ?
                                      AND label_type = 'COMPUTER'
                                      ORDER BY queuetime")
            or croak($dbh->errstr);
    my $delsth = $dbh->prepare_cached("DELETE FROM ptouch_queue
                                      WHERE job_id = ?")
            or croak($dbh->errstr);
    
    # Read and parse data
    $selsth->execute($config->{printer}) or croak($dbh->errstr);
    while((my $label = $selsth->fetchrow_hashref)) {
        my %data = (
            job_id  =>  $label->{job_id},
        );
        my @rawdat = @{$label->{labeldata}};
        foreach my $key (qw[computer_name account_user account_passwor
+d account_domain line_id description net_prod_ip net_line_ip]) {
            $data{$key} = shift @rawdat || '';
        }
        push @labels, \%data;
    }
    $selsth->finish;
    $dbh->rollback;
    
    # Now, print all labels and delete the finished jobs
    foreach my $label (@labels) {
        $0 = $ps_appname . " printing COMPUTER " . $label->{computer_n
+ame};

        my $pdf = PDF::Report->new(File => "template.pdf");
        my $page = $pdf->openpage(1);
        
        my ($width,$height) = $pdf->getPageDimensions();
        
        $pdf->setFont('Arial');
        $pdf->setSize(12);
        $pdf->addRawText("Computer:", 15, 50, "black", undef, undef, 9
+0);
        $pdf->addRawText($label->{computer_name}, 15, 110, "black", un
+def, undef, 90);
        $pdf->addRawText('Benutzer: ', 28, 50, "black", undef, undef, 
+90);
        $pdf->addRawText($label->{account_user}, 28, 110, "black", und
+ef, undef, 90);
        $pdf->addRawText('Password: ', 41, 50, "black", undef, undef, 
+90);
        $pdf->addRawText($label->{account_password}, 41, 110, "black",
+ undef, undef, 90);
        
        $pdf->setSize(8);
        $pdf->addRawText($label->{line_id} . ' / ' . $label->{descript
+ion} , 50, 50, "black", undef, undef, 90);
        $pdf->addRawText($label->{account_domain} . ' / ' . $label->{n
+et_prod_ip} . ' / ' . $label->{net_line_ip}, 59, 50, "black", undef, 
+undef, 90);
        
        $pdf->saveAs($config->{tempfilename});
        
        my $cmd = 'lp ' . $config->{tempfilename};
        `$cmd`;
        
        $delsth->execute($label->{job_id}) or croak($dbh->errstr);
        $dbh->commit;
        
        $workCount++;
    }
    
    return $workCount;
}
[download]

Before you ask: Yes we do print the user/password combinations on this label. The reasons are a too complicated to explain here... and you don't wanna know anyway.