Okay, I need some ideas...

I'm trying to come up with creative ways in which to use Perl (or Python) to make my life at work easier. It seems like there must be a way that I can automate some piece(s) of the process and in doing so, perhaps accidentally come off being more productive than I really am (which isn't that hard to do when you get the computer to do your work for you).

My daily routine involves some of the following tasks:

• Developing large client/server database GUI programs with Powerbuilder on NT4WS
• Writing zillions of lines of SQL (using the RapidSQL Editor) for stored procedures using a Sybase ASE database
• Routinely having to diff our DEV and TST directories to see which procs we've made changes to on the DEV side that have to be copied to TST and then also compiled on the test database (this one, of course, screams for a program that can manage all of that)

Now, aside from the last point mentioned there, the first thing that might spring into one's mind in a situation like this is to write a <your favorite language> to <sucky language that you work with> converter to make things more fun. In this case however, I would simply get a new job before doing that. :)

Doing my "prototyping" in a language like Perl or Python isn't feasible really either because the app is huge, so the amount of code I'd have to write just to get to the point where I could start prototyping wouldn't be worth the effort.

But what about, for example, all that SQL coding? Has anyone figured out some interesting ways of reducing their workload when faced with writing lots of SQL (an Access-like drag-drop style SQL generator seems like farrrrr too much work)?

What about unit testing? Writing effective unit tests for GUIs seems impractical enough to call "impossible".

What other ways have you found to make your life easier at work? I'm far lazier than Powerbuilder allows me to be, and feel like I'm missing out on ways to do things faster.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

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