SQL*Plus inside Perl script

Question

I am trying to connect to a table using SQL*Plus and fetch the data in a Perl script and store that output in a Perl variable.

In a shell script I would do this:

    SQL_RESULT=`sqlplus -s ${CONNECT_STRING} << EOF
    ${SQLPLUS_SETTINGS}
    select foo||'|'||bar ||'|'|| xyz from temp where dfg='some';
    exit;
    EOF`

But how can I do this in Perl?

Answer 1

Check out the DBI module. In fact, there's a whole website dedicated to it: dbi.perl.org. Also, check out the CPAN module reference for DBI.

Here's a code example, straight from the first DBI tutorial on google:

    use DBI;

    my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:Oracle:payroll')
        or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;
    my $sth = $dbh->prepare('SELECT * FROM people WHERE lastname = ?')
        or die "Couldn't prepare statement: " . $dbh->errstr;

    $sth->execute($lastname)             # Execute the query
        or die "Couldn't execute statement: " . $sth->errstr;

    # Read the matching records and print them out          
    while (@data = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
        my $firstname = $data[1];
        my $id = $data[2];
        print "\t$id: $firstname $lastname\n";
    }
    if ($sth->rows == 0) {
      print "No names matched `$lastname'.\n\n";
    }
    $sth->finish;
    print "\n";
    print "Enter name> ";

    $dbh->disconnect;

Perl also has that EOF style multiline comment; you can make a long query like this:

my $query = <<'END_QUERY';
${SQLPLUS_SETTINGS}
select foo||'|'||bar ||'|'|| xyz from temp where dfg='some';
exit;
END_QUERY