Problems with the Perl/DBI/DBD Approach

• The chain from browser to database is long.
• Spawning a child process for each database operation.
• Establishing a new TCP/IP connection every time (perhaps even doing a nameserver lookup).
• Searching for and loading the DBI and DBD modules every time.
• In MS environments, ODBC may be an issue.

Solutions

• FastCGI
  • Applications run in the server process rather than separately
  • Applications persist across requests rather than being created anew
  • Documented at FastCGI.com.
  • Here's an overview.
  • Vendor-neutral, language-independent.
  • Available as add-on modules for Apache, NCSA, Stronghold.
  • Integrated with Perl, Java, C, C++, and Tcl.
• Apache and Stronghold (commercial version of Apache) support persistent DBI connections.
• Modperl
  • Combines the Perl interpreter and the Apache server into a single executable
  • So -- does Perl become a webserver extension or does the webserver become a Perl extension? :-)
  • By Doug MacEachern
  • Available only with Apache

The Database Server Itself is Usually the Bottleneck

• Other issues are likely less important.