The Perl language has been called the "toolbox for Unix." If you are an experienced Perl programmer, you already know three things about the language: It's extremely useful, it's notoriously difficult to master, and it gives you a new way to write completely incomprehensible code. If you are not already a Perl programmer, you should be forewarned that I won't try to teach you the basics of Perl programming in this chapter. But that doesn't mean that you won't be able to get anything useful from this chapter. If you don't already know Perl, read this chapter once without paying too much attention to the syntactical detailsthey won't make a lot of sense the first time through. Then, read through the client applications again, trying them out as you go. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can make sense of the examples if you don't get too hung up on the unusual syntax.
There are two ways to connect to a PostgreSQL database from a Perl application[1]: pgsql_perl5 (also known as the Pg module) and the DBI module.
[1] I'll use the terms' application, script, and program interchangeably in this chapter. They all mean the same thing in Perl: a series of statements that does somethinghopefully something useful.
The pgsql_perl5 interface is a Perl binding for the libpq API. If you are already comfortable with the libpq API, you will find pgsql_perl5 very familiar.
In this chapter, I'll focus on the DBI module. DBI provides a portable interface to a variety of database systems. When you use the DBI module within a Perl application, you can move from database to database with few if any changes to your code. The architecture of the DBI module is similar in structure to JDBC (the Java database API) and ODBC.
Part I: General PostgreSQL Use
Introduction to PostgreSQL and SQL
Working with Data in PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL SQL Syntax and Use
Performance
Part II: Programming with PostgreSQL
Introduction to PostgreSQL Programming
Extending PostgreSQL
PL/pgSQL
The PostgreSQL C APIlibpq
A Simpler C APIlibpgeasy
The New PostgreSQL C++ APIlibpqxx
Embedding SQL Commands in C Programsecpg
Using PostgreSQL from an ODBC Client Application
Using PostgreSQL from a Java Client Application
Using PostgreSQL with Perl
Using PostgreSQL with PHP
Using PostgreSQL with Tcl and Tcl/Tk
Using PostgreSQL with Python
Npgsql: The .NET Data Provider
Other Useful Programming Tools
Part III: PostgreSQL Administration
Introduction to PostgreSQL Administration
PostgreSQL Administration
Internationalization and Localization
Security
Replicating PostgreSQL Data with Slony
Contributed Modules
Index