Re: web development tool

[Chris Jacobson]

MCMULLIN, NANCY wrote:
Hardy,
Specifically, we need to do Oracle database development running in a browser, which includes: 
- add, delete, modify records
 

This is all standard to the DBI modules.  These are all *very* basic 
database functions.  It would be pretty darn sad if the functionality 
didn't exist for this.

- display on-screen reports of that data
 

IIRC, Perl stands for 'Practical Extraction and Reporting Language'-- in 
other words, this is what the language is tailored for.  You'd have to 
be more specific about what kind of on-screen reports you were trying to 
create.  This however, doesn't have anything to do with DBI, short of 
DBI being your interface to the data you are using to create your reports.

- print hard-copy reports
 

This has nothing to do with DBI or the database at all.  DBI is just 
your interface into the database to retrieve the data you would use to 
create a report.  There are many modules out there for producing PDF 
files, Excel reports, or a simple text template that could be printed 
from a users browser.

- run batch processes
 

Crontab will do this for you (in *nix).  I believe that windows has a 
similar mechanism for scheduled events.

- allow for concurrent use
 

Mod_perl + Apache::DBI will allow for 'concurrent use'.  We currently 
run several mod_perl based applications using Apache::DBI, and we have 
(on average) about 250-1000 active users in our applications and any 
point in time.

We've already put together some simple Perl / HTML / SQL scripts that display data, 
but I  just didn't know if Perl and HTML were robust enough to do all the 
aforementioned.
 

Again, I would suggest taking a look at mod_perl, rather than relying on 
simple CGI scripts.  Mod_perl is your friend in situations where you 
want to have a scalable, and as you put it 'robust', application.

You might want to direct some of your questions to the mod_perl list. 

Chris Jacobson