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

Hi, I'm new here, and I seek Perl wisdom! I've gone through a bunch of Perl tutorials recently, and I am in the process of redesigning www.arnova.org. My experience is mostly in technical content and training development, and now I get to play around with an online database. The current search is at http://www.arnova.org/articles/articles.htm, but the developers that made the site created separate HTML files for each article, and they put it together with ColdFusion and ASP. It seems like there would be a better way to put the database out there, and return values to one HTML file that receives fields matching the user's search criteria. So that's what I am building. From this group, I am currently seeking advice as to which Perl tutorials will help me the most with my creating such a searchable database. Even better would be some active web examples, where I can read, use, and analyze the code. All the best, Dainis W. Michel dmichel@iupui.edu

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Searchable Database
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Mar 28, 2000 at 02:09 UTC
    There are two places I've found good code and ideas for dynamic web pages and content management systems (whichever term you prefer). One is Jon Udell's Practical Internet Groupware. The other is the Everything code. The latter runs this site.

    You may not do things the same way, but if you study the code you'll find how people are making this work in the real world.

Re: Searchable Database
by plaid (Chaplain) on Mar 28, 2000 at 01:03 UTC
    Looking at the search pages, that's a huge waste of time and effort to make static html pages out of each of those articles, since the articles are searchable anyways. A single, dynamically generated html page looks to be a good choice. There are numerous small scripts out there to be looked at via places such as http://cgi.resourceindex.com/ and others like it. A couple examples I came across after some searching around:

    http://www.summersault.com/software/db_browser/index.html
    http://www.rede.com/samples/image_gallery.html
    or, if you're feeling adventurous, you can always check out http://slashcode.org.

    As always, don't forget the usefulness of the DBI and appropriate DBD man pages.
Re: Searchable Database
by justinNEE (Monk) on Mar 28, 2000 at 01:49 UTC
    You say you are looking for "a better way to put the database out there"... exactly what do you mean by this? Do you want to have more complex searches or are you just talking about style? As for speed, I think it will only get slower for you from here, not to mention that this "way" is already implemented... Also, if you have to consider adding additional entries, you will either need to build an interface or go straight into the database to add entries... the way you are currently setup you could take your content and slap some HTML tags around it and be done.(ok, maybe a little formatting :)
RE: Searchable Database
by Anonymous Monk on Mar 27, 2000 at 23:00 UTC
    check out extropia.com; i worked on a project adapting some of their stuff, and you can see the results at: www.infinitejoy.com/events