DBI/DBD

DBI is the most common database interface for the Perl programming language. DBI was specified by Tim Bunce, in collaboration with others, starting in 1994, and is currently maintained 'live' across the Internet in accordance with the Open Source model. DBD serves as an "adapter" which allows programmers to "plug in" nearly platform-independent SQL code into their applications.

The DBI and DBD Perl packages allow Perl programmers to view the many database environments that are on the market in a uniform way. Each supported database environment is implemented as a DBD driver, in much the same way that hardware devices from multiple vendors can be used across CPU platforms. DBD implementations can be obtained by download from the Internet. DBD implementations exist for proprietary products such as Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, etc. and for freely available databases such as MySQL.