Which Platform and Version?

Both Perl and Oracle run on virtually every hardware platform and operating system. To demonstrate this ubiquity, we've used a wide variety of OS platforms and Oracle versions in the preparation of this book. Oracle versions range from Oracle7.3 through Oracle9i. OS platforms include Linux Red Hat 6, Linux SuSE 7.3, Solaris 8, Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and others. We've focused on Unix and Win32 operating systems, but we've also included specific installation instructions for particular operating system variants when necessary.

Against this irresistible surge of platforms, our immovable rock is the Perl version we've used on all of these operating systems. Perl 5.6.1 was the latest stable Perl release available as we wrote this book and developed the toolkit software. We also used the most current stable version of Perl DBI, Version 1.20, in conjunction with Perl DBI's Oracle-specific driver module, DBD::Oracle (DataBase Driver for Oracle), Version 1.12.

By the time you read this book, it's possible that the latest stable versions on the CPAN web site will have been upgraded, particularly if Perl itself is upgraded to Perl6, which was under development as we wrote this book. We'll be updating our toolkit as an open source project in order to cope with any such Perl enhancements.