Chapter 1. Perl Meets Oracle

Perl is the world's number one solution for transforming and gluing data together, and Oracle is the world's number one solution for storing that data. In this book we'll explore the interface between two of the finest American inventions since baseball and pretzels. We're going to grab that Oracle data, we're going to flip that Oracle data, and we're going to munge that Oracle data. And we're going to do it all in Perl!

The goal of this book is to explore the frontier connecting the Perl and Oracle worlds, having as much fun along the way as possible. There are many routes through this largely unexplored territory, and one we think is particularly important is the one focused on Oracle database administration. We are Oracle DBAs ourselves and we know the frustrations the job can bring. We've found Perl an enormous help to us in performing administrative tasks — both routine ones, like adding new users to the database, and more complex ones, like monitoring database connectivity in real time and tracking down database performance problems by comparing SQL execution plans. We want to share the information we've acquired over the years about Perl and its many Oracle applications. We also want to give you access to our own Oracle database administration scripts, which we've packaged up in the Perl Database Administration (PDBA) Toolkit described in this book and freely available on the O'Reilly web site.

This chapter sets the scene by introducing you to Perl and how it connects to Oracle. We'll look at the following:

Perl's origins and advantages

We'll take a look at where Perl came from and what makes it such a popular and powerful language.

Perl/Oracle architecture

We'll see how Perl connects to the Oracle database via the Perl DBI module, the DBD::Oracle program, and Oracle's own OCI product. These modules interact to allow Perl programs access to Oracle databases.

Perl for Oracle DBAs

We'll discuss why Perl is a particularly appropriate language for Oracle DBAs to learn and use.

We'll also provide a list of additional Perl resources.