Ah, OK. I've never worked w/Oracle via Perl, however it's one of the strongly-supported DBs, usually via the DBD::Oracle module and it's "descendants". A quick check with my local Activestate install (w/the latest version) vs. the CPAN Search Site shows the ActiveState PPM versions of Oracle modules are up-to-date, so you should be great there!

If I might offer two pieces of advice? Once you feel solid with basic Perl, I'd recommend starting with Programming the Perl DBI -- I wish I still had my copy! After that, and if you're looking to build a really strong toolset, Perl has developed some powerful tools for making code-based database queries really simple. I'd recommend learning a tool like Class::DBI or DBIx::Class; it's heavy at the beginning for a beginner, but you'll eventually be able to write very simple code in a "robust" fashion to do your queries.

I hope that helps you guys out! Good luck!