Chapter 7
For all that is great about the CGI module, it has its detractors. The usual com 
plaints fall along the lines of memory consumption, performance and sheer code 
size. For these reasons there are many competitors to CGI.pm on CPAN CGI::Lite,
7
CGI::Minimal,
8
 and CGI::Thin,
9
 to name a few. These modules tend to start by 
implementing just the core CGI functionality and grow slowly from there as the 
author realizes that this or that CGI.pm function is really quite useful after all. Ulti 
mately they may perform better and use less memory, but CGI.pm remains more 
popular for a good reason it does everything a CGI programmer needs and it 
does it well.
DBI
The DBI module, by Tim Bunce, provides Perl with an object oriented interface to 
virtually every relational database system under the sun (MySQL, PostgreSQL, 
Oracle, Sybase, and many more). DBI accomplishes this Olympian feat by relying 
on database driver (DBD) modules to interface with individual databases. For 
example, when you use DBI to talk to a PostgreSQL database, DBI loads the 
DBD::Pg
10
 module. If you want to connect to MySQL, the DBD::mysql
11
 module is 
loaded. Even CSV
12
 files can be accessed through the DBD::CSV
13
 module. There 
are DBD modules available for all of the commonly used databases, and many of 
the less common ones too.
Before DBI, uneven database connection libraries were the norm each 
database had its own modules and they all worked (or didn't work) differently. Perl 
was struggling to be useful for serious database software development. DBI provided a 
great platform for database interface libraries, and turned Perl into a serious 
database application programming environment.
DBI defines two interfaces a front end interface for users and a back end 
interface for DBD module programmers. Regardless of the underlying DBD 
module being used, the DBI front end interface remains the same. The benefit of 
this system is that users can learn to use the DBI module and employ those skills to 
access any database with a DBD driver. Also, code written to the DBI interface can 
be easily ported between databases.
14
7. Written by Benjamin Low
8. Written by Benjamin Franz
9. Written by R. Geoffrey Avery
10. Written by Jeffrey Baker
11. Written by Jochen Wiedmann
12. Stands for Comma Separated Values, a text format commonly used to store tabular data
13. Written by Jeff Zucker
14. This would be much easier if databases all spoke the same dialect of SQL, but unfortunately 
that is not the case.
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