CGI Programming with Perl, 2nd Edition

£19.96

Scott Guelich,Shishir Gundavaram and Gunther Birznieks; ISBN: 1-56592-419-3

Programming on the Web today can involve any of several technologies, but the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) has held its ground as the most mature method--and one of the most powerful ones--of providing dynamic web content. CGI is a generic interface for calling external programs to crunch numbers, query databases, generate customized graphics, or perform any other server-side task. There was a time when CGI was the only game in town for server-side programming; today, although we have ASP, PHP, Java servlets, and ColdFusion (among others), CGI continues to be the most ubiquitous server-side technology on the Web.

CGI programs can be written in any programming language, but Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI. Initially developed over a decade ago for text processing, Perl has evolved into a powerful object-oriented language, while retaining its simplicity of use. CGI programmers appreciate Perl's text manipulation features and its CGI.pm module, which gives a well-integrated object-oriented interface to practically all CGI-related tasks. While other languages might be more elegant or more efficient, Perl is still considered the primary language for CGI.

CGI Programming with Perl, Second Edition, offers a comprehensive explanation of using CGI to serve dynamic web content. Based on the best-selling CGI Programming on the World Wide Web, this edition has been completely rewritten to demonstrate current techniques available with the CGI.pm module and the latest versions of Perl. The book starts at the beginning, by explaining how CGI works, and then moves swiftly into the subtle details of developing CGI programs.

Topics include:

• Incorporating JavaScript for form validation
• Controlling browser caching
• Making CGI scripts secure in Perl
• Working with databases
• Creating simple search engines
• Maintaining state between multiple sessions
• Generating graphics dynamically
• Improving performance of your CGI scripts

Computer Science & Perl Programming

£22.80

Jon Orwant; ISBN: 0-596-00310-2

In its first five years of existence, The Perl Journal ran 247 articles by over 120 authors. Every serious Perl programmer subscribed to it, and every notable Perl guru jumped at the opportunity to write for it. TPJ explained critical topics such as regular expressions, databases, and object-oriented programming, and demonstrated Perl's utility for fields as diverse as astronomy, biology, economics, AI, and games. The magazine gave birth to both the Obfuscated Perl Contest and the Perl Poetry contest, and remains a proud and timeless achievement of Perl during one of its most exciting periods of development.

Computer Science and Perl Programming is the first volume of The Best of the Perl Journal, compiled and re-edited by the original editor and publisher of The Perl Journal, Jon Orwant. In this series, we've taken the very best (and still relevant) articles published in TPJ over its 5 years of publication and immortalized them into three volumes. This volume has 70 articles devoted to hard-core computer science, advanced programming techniques, and the underlying mechanics of Perl.

Here's a sample of what you'll find inside:

• Jeffrey Friedl on Understanding Regexes
• Mark Jason Dominus on optimizing your Perl programs with Memoization
• Damian Conway on Parsing
• Tim Meadowcroft on integrating Perl with Microsoft Office
• Larry Wall on the culture of Perl

Written by 41 of the most prominent and prolific members of the closely-knit Perl community, this anthology does what no other book can, giving unique insight into the real-life applications and powerful techniques made possible by Perl.

Other books tell you how to use Perl, but this book goes far beyond that: it shows you not only how to use Perl, but what you could use Perl *for*. This is more than just The Best of the Perl Journal -- in many ways, this is the best of Perl.

Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason

£19.96

Dave Rolsky and Ken Williams; ISBN: 0-596-00225-4

Mason doesn't aim to be the one true Perl-based templating system for building web sites, but it's led many programmers to abandon their custom solutions when they've seen how much easier using Mason can be. It's a powerful, open source, Perl-based web site development and delivery engine, with features that make it an ideal backend for high load sites serving dynamic content. Mason uses a concept called components: a mix of HTML, Perl, and special Mason commands. These components can be entire web pages, or bits of HTML that can be embedded in top-level components. Shared and reusable, these components greatly simplify site maintenance: when you change a shared component, you instantly change all pages that refer to it.

Although using Mason isn't difficult, creating a Mason-based site can be tricky. Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason, written by members of Mason's core development team, shows you how to take advantage of Mason's strengths while avoiding the obstacles that inexperienced users may encounter. Mason's unique features, when used properly, can streamline the design of a web site or application. This concise book covers these features from several angles, and includes a study of the authors' sample site where these features are used.

Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason shows you how to create large, complex, dynamically driven web sites that look good and are a snap to maintain. You'll learn how to visualize multiple Mason-based solutions to any given problem and select among them. The book covers the latest line of Mason development 1.1x, which has many new features, including line number reporting based on source files, sub-requests, and easier use as a CGI. The only book to cover this important tool, Embedding Perl in HTML with Mason is essential reading for any Perl programmer who wants to simplify web site design. Learn how to use Mason, and you'll spend more time making things work, and less time reinventing the wheel.

Games, Diversions & Perl Culture

£22.80

Jon Orwant; ISBN: 0-596-00312-9

The Perl Journal (TPJ) did something most print journals aspire to, but few succeed. Within a remarkable short time, TPJ acquired a cult-following and became the voice of the Perl community. Every serious Perl programmer subscribed to it, and every notable Perl guru jumped at the opportunity to write for it. Back issues were swapped like trading cards. No longer in print format, TPJ remains the quintessential spirit of Perl--a publication for and by Perl programmers who see fun and beauty in an admittedly quirky little language.

Games, Diversions, and Perl Culture is the third volume of The Best of the Perl Journal, compiled and re-edited by the original editor and publisher of The Perl Journal, Jon Orwant. In this series, we've taken the very best (and still relevant) articles published in TPJ over its 5 years of publication and immortalized them into three volumes.

The 47 articles included in this volume are simply some of the best Perl articles ever written on the subjects of games, diversions, and the unique culture of this close-knit community, by some of the best Perl authors and coders. Games, Diversions & Perl Culture focuses on entertaining topics that make Perl users such fanatics about the language. You'll find all of the playful features TPJ offered over the years, including the Obfuscated Perl Contests, Perl Quiz Shows, humor articles, and renowned one-line recipes. The book also contains a panoply of quirky applications of Perl, including genetic algorithms, home automation, music programming, and an entire section on natural language processing.

This anthology is an unmatched compendium of Perl lore.

Learning Perl on Win32 Systems

£19.96

Randal L. Schwartz,Erik Olson and Tom Christiansen; ISBN: 1-56592-324-3

In this smooth, carefully paced course, leading Perl trainers and a Windows NT practitioner teach you to program in the language that promises to emerge as the scripting language of choice on NT. With a foreword by Larry Wall, the creator of Perl, this book is the "official" guide for both formal (classroom) and informal learning. Based on the "llama book," Learning Perl on Win32 Systems features tips for PC users and new NT-specific examples.

Perl for Win32 is a language for easily manipulating text, files, user and group profiles, performance and event logs, and registry entries, and a distribution is available on the Windows NT Resource Kit. Peer-to-peer technical support is now available on the perl.win32.users mailing list.

The contents include:

• An introduction to "the Perl way" for Windows users
• A quick tutorial stroll through Perl in one lesson
• Systematic, topic-by-topic coverage of Perl's broad capabilities
• Innumerable, brief code examples
• Programming exercises for each topic, with fully worked-out answers
• Access to NT system functions through Perl
• Database access with Perl
• CGI programming with Perl

Erik Olson is Director of advanced technologies for Axiom Technologies, LC, where he specializes in providing Win32 development solutions. Randal L. Schwartz and Tom Christiansen have also written Programming Perl, co-authored with Larry Wall and published by O'Reilly & Associates.

Mastering Algorithms with Perl

£19.96

Jon Orwant,Jarkko Hietaniemi and John Macdonald; ISBN: 1-56592-398-7

Many programmers would love to use Perl for projects that involve heavy lifting, but miss the many traditional algorithms that textbooks teach for other languages. Computer scientists have identified many techniques that a wide range of programs need, such as:

• Fuzzy pattern matching for text (identify misspellings!)
• Finding correlations in data
• Game-playing algorithms
• Predicting phenomena such as Web traffic
• Polynomial and spline fitting

Using algorithms explained in this book, you too can carry out traditional programming tasks in a high-powered, efficient, easy-to-maintain manner with Perl. This book assumes a basic understanding of Perl syntax and functions, but not necessarily any background in computer science. The authors explain in a readable fashion the reasons for using various classic programming techniques, the kind of applications that use them, and -- most important -- how to code these algorithms in Perl.

If you are an amateur programmer, this book will fill you in on the essential algorithms you need to solve problems like an expert. If you have already learned algorithms in other languages, you will be surprised at how much different (and often easier) it is to implement them in Perl. And yes, the book even has the obligatory fractal display program. There have been dozens of books on programming algorithms, some of them excellent, but never before has there been one that uses Perl.

The authors include the editor of The Perl Journal and master librarian of CPAN; all are contributors to CPAN and have archived much of the code in this book there. "This book was so exciting I lost sleep reading it."~ Tom Christiansen

Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics

£22.80

James Tisdall; ISBN: 0-596-00307-2

Historically, programming hasn't been considered a critical skill for biologists. But now, with access to vast amounts of biological data contained in public databases, programming skills are increasingly in strong demand in biology research and development. Perl, with its highly developed capacities in string handling, text processing, networking, and rapid prototyping, has emerged as the programming language of choice for biological data analysis.

Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics covers the core Perl language and many of its module extensions, presenting them in the context of biological data and problems of pressing interest to the biological community. This book, along with Beginning Perl for Bioinformatics, forms a basic course in Perl programming. This second volume finishes the basic Perl tutorial material (references, complex data structures, object-oriented programming, use of modules--all presented in a biological context) and presents some advanced topics of considerable interest in bioinformatics.

The range of topics covered in Mastering Perl for Bioinformatics prepares the reader for enduring and emerging developments in critical areas of bioinformatics programming such as:

• Gene finding
• String alignment
• Methods of data storage and retrieval (SML and databases)
• Modeling of networks (graphs and Petri nets)
• Graphics (Tk)
• Parallelization
• Interfacing with other programming languages
• Statistics (PDL)
• Protein structure determination
• Biological models of computation (DNA Computers)

Biologists and computer scientists who have conquered the basics of Perl and are ready to move even further in their mastery of this versatile language will appreciate the author's well-balanced approach to applying Perl's analytical abilities to the field of bioinformatics. Full of practical examples and real-world biological problem solving, this book is a must for any reader wanting to move beyond beginner level Perl in bioinformatics.

Mastering Perl/Tk

£25.56

Stephen Lidie and Nancy Walsh; ISBN: 1-56592-716-8

Perl/Tk is the marriage of the Tk graphical toolkit with Perl, the powerful programming language used primarily for system administration, web programming, and database manipulation. With Perl/Tk, you can build Perl programs with an attractive, intuitive GUI interface with all the power of Perl behind it.

Mastering Perl/Tk is the "bible" of Perl/Tk: It's not only a great book for getting started, but the best reference for learning the techniques of experienced Perl/Tk programmers. The first half of the book contains the basics on how to use Perl/Tk, and then branches out into advanced applications with a series of extensive program examples. The result is a book accessible for novices, and invaluable for experienced programmers ready to learn the next step in the elegant and effective use of Perl/Tk. The book includes:

• An introduction to each of the basic Perl/Tk widgets and geometry managers
• A dissection of the MainLoop, including how to use callbacks and bindings effectively
• Coverage of the Tix widgets, an extended set of widgets that are a part of the standard Perl/Tk distribution
• Working with images in Perl/Tk, including bitmaps, pixmaps, photos, and how to compose a compound image type
• How to create custom mega-widgets in Perl/Tk, both composite and derived
• Handling interprocess communication with Perl/Tk, both with standard Unix utilities (pipes and sockets) and with the send command designed for direct communication between Tk applications
• Developing your own Tk widget in the C language
• Examples of web applications written with Perl/Tk and the LWP library

The book also includes appendices on installing Perl/Tk, a complete quick-reference for each standard widget, and listings of all the extended examples in the book.

Nancy Walsh is the author of Learning Perl/Tk, and Steve Lidie wrote the Perl/Tk Pocket Reference as well as a series of Perl/Tk articles in The Perl Journal. Together, they have written Mastering Perl/Tk to be the definitive guide to Perl/Tk.

Perl & LWP

£19.96

Sean M. Burke; ISBN: 0-596-00178-9

Perl soared to popularity as a language for creating and managing web content, but with LWP (Library for WWW in Perl), Perl is equally adept at consuming information on the Web. LWP is a suite of modules for fetching and processing web pages.

The Web is a vast data source that contains everything from stock prices to movie credits, and with LWP all that data is just a few lines of code away. Anything you do on the Web, whether it's buying or selling, reading or writing, uploading or downloading, news to e-commerce, can be controlled with Perl and LWP. You can automate Web-based purchase orders as easily as you can set up a program to download MP3 files from a web site.

Perl & LWP covers:

• Understanding LWP and its design
• Fetching and analyzing URLs
• Extracting information from HTML using regular expressions and tokens
• Working with the structure of HTML documents using trees
• Setting and inspecting HTTP headers and response codes
• Managing cookies
• Accessing information that requires authentication
• Extracting links
• Cooperating with proxy caches
• Writing web spiders (also known as robots) in a safe fashion

Perl & LWP includes many step-by-step examples that show how to apply the various techniques. Programs to extract information from the web sites of BBC News, Altavista, ABEBooks.com, and the Weather Underground, to name just a few, are explained in detail, so that you understand how and why they work.

Perl programmers who want to automate and mine the web can pick up this book and be immediately productive. Written by a contributor to LWP, and with a foreword by one of LWP's creators, Perl & LWP is the authoritative guide to this powerful and popular toolkit.

Perl & XML

£19.96

Erik T. Ray and Jason McIntosh; ISBN: 0-596-00205-X

XML is a text-based markup language that has taken the programming world by storm. More powerful than HTML yet less demanding than SGML, XML has proven itself to be flexible and resilient. XML is the perfect tool for formatting documents with even the smallest bit of complexity, from Web pages to legal contracts to books. However, XML has also proven itself to be indispensable for organizing and conveying other sorts of data as well, thus its central role in web services like SOAP and XML-RPC.

As the Perl programming language was tailor-made for manipulating text, few people have disputed the fact that Perl and XML are perfectly suited for one another. The only question has been what's the best way to do it. That's where this book comes in.

Perl & XML is aimed at Perl programmers who need to work with XML documents and data. The book covers all the major modules for XML processing in Perl, including XML::Simple, XML::Parser, XML::LibXML, XML::XPath, XML::Writer, XML::Pyx, XML::Parser::PerlSAX, XML::SAX, XML::SimpleObject, XML::TreeBuilder, XML::Grove, XML::DOM, XML::RSS, XML::Generator::DBI, and SOAP::Lite. But this book is more than just a listing of modules; it gives a complete, comprehensive tour of the landscape of Perl and XML, making sense of the myriad of modules, terminology, and techniques.

This book covers:

• parsing XML documents and writing them out again
• working with event streams and SAX
• tree processing and the Document Object Model
• advanced tree processing with XPath and XSLT

Most valuably, the last two chapters of Perl & XML give complete examples of XML applications, pulling together all the tools at your disposal. All together, Perl & XML is the single book that gives you a solid grounding in XML processing with Perl.

Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, 2nd Edition

£16.76

Allison Randal,Dan Sugalski and Leopold Tötsch; ISBN: 0-596-00737-X

Distilling many years of Perl experience--including an insiders look at Perl development (the authors are members of the Perl 6 core development team)--Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials, 2nd Edition is an unparalleled preview of major changes in the widely-anticipated Perl 6. This sneak peek of what's coming in Perl includes succinct but thorough coverage of groundbreaking new developments in Parrot--the language-independent interpreter engine that will execute code written in the new Perl 6 language. Designed to be language independent, Parrot can be used to interpret other dynamic languages such as Python, Tcl, Ruby, and even Java.

Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials also uncovers the most revolutionary change in the language itself--Apocalypse 12 on objects. The Apocalypse design documents (in the sense of "revealing", not "end-of-the-world") explain significant changes in new Perl 6 features, numbered according to the chapters in O'Reilly's landmark Camel book , Programming Perl.

Apocalypse 12 is the result of cutting-edge research in object-oriented languages and is guaranteed to grab the attention of any serious Perl programmer. Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials also includes expanded coverage of Apocalypse 5 (regular expressions) and Apocalypse 6 (subroutines).

Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials is the only book available to chart the course of the long but fruitful voyage of Perl 6. It reveals all the ingenious developments that will make Perl 6 more powerful and easier to use.

Perl gurus and programmers alike will rely on this slim but essential book for both a clear view of the Perl horizon and to ensure they hit the ground running once this important new version of Perl is released.

Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition

£28.40

Tom Christiansen and Nathan Torkington; ISBN: 0-596-00313-7

Find a Perl programmer, and you'll find a copy of Perl Cookbook nearby. Perl Cookbook is a comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Perl. The book contains hundreds of rigorously reviewed Perl "recipes" and thousands of examples ranging from brief one-liners to complete applications.

The second edition of Perl Cookbook has been fully updated for Perl 5.8, with extensive changes for Unicode support, I/O layers, mod_perl, and new technologies that have emerged since the previous edition of the book. Recipes have been updated to include the latest modules. New recipes have been added to every chapter of the book, and some chapters have almost doubled in size.

Covered topic areas include:

• Manipulating strings, numbers, dates, arrays, and hashes
• Pattern matching and text substitutions
• References, data structures, objects, and classes
• Signals and exceptions
• Screen addressing, menus, and graphical applications
• Managing other processes
• Writing secure scripts
• Client-server programming
• Internet applications programming with mail, news, ftp, and telnet
• CGI and mod_perl programming
• Web programming

Since its first release in 1998, Perl Cookbook has earned its place in the libraries of serious Perl users of all levels of expertise by providing practical answers, code examples, and mini-tutorials addressing the challenges that programmers face. Now the second edition of this bestselling book is ready to earn its place among the ranks of favorite Perl books as well.

Whether you're a novice or veteran Perl programmer, you'll find Perl Cookbook, 2nd Edition to be one of the most useful books on Perl available. Its comfortable discussion style and accurate attention to detail cover just about any topic you'd want to know about. You can get by without having this book in your library, but once you've tried a few of the recipes, you won't want to.

Perl Debugger Pocket Reference

£5.56

Richard Foley; ISBN: 0-596-00503-2

Most Perl programmers know about the Perl debugger--the nifty little built-in utility that you can use to fully debug any programs that you write. Inside the interactive debugger environment, you're prompted for commands that let you examine your source code, set breakpoints, dump out function call stacks, change values of variables, and much more. It's so convenient that some programmers run it just to test out Perl constructs as they create a program. But although it's on their radar, not many Perl programmers take the time to master the debugger. That's where the Perl Debugger Pocket Reference comes in.

This little book provides a quick and convenient path to mastery of the Perl debugger and its commands. Written by a core member of the Perl debugger development team, it's an ideal quick reference to debugger commands, as well as a detailed tutorial on how to get started. The Perl Debugger Pocket Reference provides complete coverage in a conveniently small package.

Maybe you write code so clean you never have to look at it twice. Or perhaps you'd rather focus your energies on writing clean code, rather than learning about the debugger. But if you need to learn about the Perl debugger in a hurry, the Perl Debugger Pocket Reference is the book you'll want to have close by. And you can always keep a copy on hand to share with programmers who need it more than you do.

O'Reilly's Pocket References have become a favorite among programmers everywhere. By providing a wealth of important details in a concise, well-organized format, these handy books deliver just what you need to complete the task at hand. When you've reached a sticking point in your work and need to get to a solution quickly, the new Perl Debugger Pocket Reference will get you back on the right track.

Perl Graphics Programming

£22.80

Shawn Wallace; ISBN: 0-596-00219-X

Graphics programmers aren't the only ones who need to be proficient with graphics. Web and applications programmers know that a dull web page can be quickly transformed into one that's interesting and lively with the use of well-planned graphics. And fortunately, you don't need the skills of a fulltime graphics programmer to use graphics effectively. From access counters and log report graphs to scientific plots and on-the-fly animated GIFs, graphics scripting is within the grasp of most web programmers. Using open source software, like Perl, you have the power to dynamically generate graphics based on user input and activity, easily manipulate graphics content, and optimize graphics for compression and quality.

Geared toward Perl users and webmasters, Perl Graphics Programming focuses on open-source scripting programs that manipulate graphics files for use on the Web. The book demystifies the manipulation of graphics formats for newcomers to the Web with a practical, resource-like approach. With this book you'll learn to:

• Generate dynamic web graphics with charts, tables, and buttons
• Automate graphics tasks (thumbnails and borders)
• Create dynamics web documents (PDF, Postscript)
• Produce rich Internet experiences with Flash and SVG

You'll begin with a tour of the most common web graphic file formats--PNG, JPEG, GIF, SWF, SVG, Postscript and PDF--then you'll explore the most powerful tools and Perl modules available for manipulating these graphics, such as GD, PerlMagick, and GIMP. Included in this part of the book is a thorough description of the Ming module for creating on-the-fly Flash files. Next, a "cookbook" section includes practical, all purpose recipes: GIF animation, generating images within a dynamic application, communicating between SWF front-end and Perl back-end, XSLT transformations, compression, and much more.

Perl programmers naturally turn to Perl to tackle whatever challenge they have at hand, and graphics programming is no exception. Perl Graphics Programming provides all the tools you need to begin programming and designing graphics for the Web immediately. This book will change how you think about generating and manipulating graphics for the Web.

Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition

£5.56

Johan Vromans; ISBN: 0-596-00374-9

The Perl Pocket Reference is an invaluable reference for those who find themselves frequently searching for a quick answer to a question or reminder of a syntax rule. This handy, well-organized quick reference condenses stacks of Perl documentation down to the most essential at-your-fingertips facts. For ease-of-use, convenience, and price, this little reference is the first place Perl programmers look when they need an answer quickly.

The Perl Pocket Referenc provides a complete overview of the Perl programming language, all packed into a convenient, carry-around booklet. It is updated for Perl 5.8, and covers a summary of Perl syntax rules, a complete list of operators, built-in functions, and standard library modules, all with brief descriptions. Also included are the newest Perl features, such as enhanced regular expressions, multithreading, the Perl compiler, and Unicode support.

The Perl Pocket Reference, 4th Edition, is the perfect companion to the authoritative books on Perl published by O'Reilly & Associates: Programming Perl, Learning Perl, and the Perl Cookbook. This pocket reference will never make it to the bookshelf--dog-eared and well worn, it will remain within arms reach of the keyboard or tucked in a back pocket, where it will be referred to on a daily basis.

Perl Template Toolkit

£22.80

Darren Chamberlain,David Cross and Andy Wardley; ISBN: 0-596-00476-1

Among the many different approaches to "templating" with Perl--such as Embperl, Mason, HTML::Template, and hundreds of other lesser known systems--the Template Toolkit is widely recognized as one of the most versatile. Like other templating systems, the Template Toolkit allows programmers to embed Perl code and custom macros into HTML documents in order to create customized documents on the fly. But unlike the others, the Template Toolkit is as facile at producing HTML as it is at producing XML, PDF, or any other output format. And because it has its own simple templating language, templates can be written and edited by people who don't know Perl. In short, the Template Toolkit combines the best features of its competitors, with ease-of-use and flexibility, resulting in a technology that's fast, powerful and extensible, and ideally suited to the production and maintenance of web content and other dynamic document systems.

In Perl Template Toolkit you'll find detailed coverage of this increasingly popular technology. Written by core members of the technology's development team, the book guides you through the entire process of installing, configuring, using, and extending the Template Toolkit. It begins with a fast-paced but thorough tutorial on building web content with the Template Toolkit, and then walks you through generating and using data files, particularly with XML. It also provides detailed information on the Template Toolkit's modules, libraries, and tools in addition to a complete reference manual.

Topics in the book include:

• Getting started with the template toolkit
• The Template language
• Template directives
• Filters
• Plugins
• Extending the Template Toolkit
• Accessing databases
• XML
• Advanced static web page techniques
• Dynamic web content and web applications

The only book to cover this important tool, Perl Template Toolkit is essential reading for any Perl programmer who wants to create dynamic web content that is remarkably easy to maintain. This book is your surefire guide to implementing this fast, flexible, and powerful templating system.

Perl for Oracle DBAs

£25.56

Andy Duncan and Jared Still; ISBN: 0-596-00210-6

Perl is a very powerful tool for Oracle database administrators, but too few DBAs realize how helpful Perl can be in managing, monitoring, and tuning Oracle databases. Whether you're responsible for Oracle9i, Oracle8i, or earlier databases, you'll find Perl an invaluable addition to your database administration arsenal.

You don't need to be a Perl expert to use the excellent applications and scripts described in Perl for Oracle DBAs. The book explains what you need to know about Perl, provides a wealth of ready-to-use scripts developed especially for Oracle DBAs, and suggests many resources for further exploration. The book covers:

• The Perl language -- an introduction to Perl, its rich history and culture, and its extensive text processing and data transformation capabilities.
• The Perl/Oracle architecture -- Detailed information about Perl DBI, DBD::Oracle, the Oracle Call Interface (OCI), Oracle::OCI, extproc_perl, and mod_perl, the modules that allow Perl programs to communicate with Oracle databases.
• Perl applications for Oracle DBAs -- Profiles of the best Perl open source applications available for use and customization by Oracle DBAs: Perl/Tk, OraExplain, StatsView, Orac, DDL::Oracle, SchemaDiff, Senora, DBD::Chart, SchemaView-Plus, Oracletool, Karma, Embperl, and Mason.
• The Perl Database Administration (PDBA) Toolkit -- a comprehensive suite of specialized, ready-to-use scripts designed to help Oracle DBAs perform both routine and special-purpose administrative tasks: monitoring the Oracle alert log and databases, creating and managing Oracle user accounts, maintaining indexes and extents, extracting DDL and data, troubleshooting and tuning database problems, and much more.

The book also explains how Oracle DBAs and developers can extend the toolkit and solve their own database administration problems using Perl.

Perl for System Administration

£19.96

David N. Blank-Edelman; ISBN: 1-56592-609-9

Some people plan to become administrators. The rest of us are thrust into it: we are webmasters, hobbyists, or just the default "technical people" on staff who are expected to keep things running. After some stumbling around repeating the same steps over and over again (and occasionally paying the price when we forget one), we realize that we must automate these tasks, or suffer endless frustration. Thus enters Perl.

The Perl programming language is ideal for writing quick yet powerful scripts that automate many administrative tasks. It's modular, it's powerful, and it's perfect for managing systems and services on many platforms.

Perl for System Administration is designed for all levels of administrators--from hobbyists to card-carrying SAGE members--sysadmins on multi-platform sites. Written for several different platforms (Unix, Windows NT, and Mac OS), it's a guide to the pockets of administration where Perl can be most useful for sites large and small, including:

• Filesystem management
• User administration with a dash of XML
• DNS and other network name services
• Database administration using DBI and ODBC
• Directory services and frameworks like LDAP and ADSI
• Using email for system administration
• Working with log files of all kinds

Each chapter concentrates on a single administrative area, discusses the possible pitfalls, and then shows how Perl comes to the rescue. Along the way we encounter interesting Perl features and tricks, with many extended examples and complete programs. The scripts included in the book can simply be used as written or with minimal adaptation. But it's likely that readers will also get a taste of what Perl can do, and start extending those scripts for tasks that we haven't dreamed of. Perl for System Adminstration doesn't attempt to teach the Perl language, but it is an excellent introduction to the power and flexibility of Perl, and it whets the appetite to learn more. It's for anyone who needs to use Perl for system administration and needs to hit the ground running.

Perl for Web Site Management

£19.96

John Callender; ISBN: 1-56592-647-1

Checking links, batch editing HTML files, tracking users, and writing CGI scripts--these are the often tedious daily tasks that can be done much more easily with Perl, the scripting language that runs on almost all computing platforms. If you're more interested in streamlining your web activities than in learning a new programming language, Perl for Web Site Management is for you: it's not so much about learning Perl as it is about using Perl to do common web chores more efficiently.

The secret is that, although becoming a Perl expert may be hard, most Perl scripts are relatively simple. Using Perl and other open source tools, you'll learn how to:

• Incorporate a simple search engine
• Write a simple CGI gateway
• Convert multiple text files into HTML
• Monitor log files
• Track users as they navigate your site

Even if you don't have any programming background, this book will get you quickly past Perl's seemingly forbidding barrier of chops and chomps, execs and elsifs. You'll be able to put an end to using clunky tools, editing files tediously by hand, or relying on programmers and system administrators to do "the hard stuff" for you. Sure, you might learn a little bit about programming as well, and perhaps something about the role of open source tools on the Web, but the purpose of Perl for Web Site Management isn't to educate you--it's to empower you. Whether you're a developer, a designer, or simply a dabbler on the Web, this book is the plain-English, hands-on introduction to Perl you've been waiting for.

Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

£22.80

Stephen Spainhour,Ellen Siever and Nathan Patwardhan; ISBN: 0-596-00241-6

This complete guide to the Perl programming language ranges widely through the Perl programmer's universe, gathering together in a convenient form a wealth of information about Perl itself and its application to CGI scripts, XML processing, network programming, database interaction, and graphical user interfaces. The book is an ideal reference for experienced Perl programmers and beginners alike.

With more than a million dedicated programmers, Perl is proving to be the best language for the latest trends in computing and business, including network programming and the ability to create and manage web sites. It?s a language that every Unix system administrator and serious web developer needs to know. In the past few years, Perl has found its way into complex web applications of multinational banks, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and hundreds of large corporations.

In this second edition, Perl in a Nutshell has been expanded to include coverage of Perl 5.8, with information on Unicode processing in Perl, new functions and modules that have been added to the core language, and up-to-date details on running Perl on the Win32 platform. The book also covers Perl modules for recent technologies such as XML and SOAP.

Here are just some of the topics contained in this book:

• Basic Perl reference
• Quick reference to built-in functions and standard modules
• CGI.pm and mod_perl
• XML::* modules
• DBI, the database-independent API for Perl
• Sockets programming
• LWP, the library for Web programming in Perl
• Network programming with the Net modules
• Perl/Tk, the Tk extension to Perl for graphical interfaces
• Modules for interfacing with Win32 systems

As part of the successful "in a Nutshell" book series from O'Reilly & Associates, Perl in a Nutshell is for readers who want a single reference for all their needs.

"In a nutshell, Perl is designed to make the easy jobs easy, without making the hard jobs impossible."

-- Larry Wall, creator of Perl

Perl/Tk Pocket Reference

£5.56

Stephen Lidie; ISBN: 1-56592-517-3

The Perl/Tk Pocket Reference is a companion volume to Learning Perl/Tk, an O'Reilly Animal Guide. Learning Perl/Tk is a tutorial for Perl/Tk, the extension to Perl for creating graphical user interfaces. With Tk, Perl programs can be window-based rather than command-line based, with buttons, entry fields, listboxes, menus, scrollbars, balloons, tables, dialogs, and more. And Perl/Tk programs run on UNIX and Windows-based computers.

This small book is a handy reference guide geared toward the advanced Perl/Tk programmer. Novice Perl/Tk programmers will find that its compact size gives them a global view of Perl/Tk's capabilities; they can then turn to Learning Perl/Tk for details. The Perl/Tk Pocket Reference describes every Perl/Tk graphical element, including general widget and variable information, callbacks, geometry management, bindings, events, and window management, as well as composite widget, font, and image creation and manipulation commands.

Practical mod_perl

£28.40

Stas Bekman and Eric Cholet; ISBN: 0-596-00227-0

mod_perl embeds the popular programming language Perl in the Apache web server, giving rise to a fast and powerful web programming environment. Practical mod_perl is the definitive book on how to use, optimize, and troubleshoot mod_perl.

New mod_perl users will learn how to quickly and easily get mod_perl compiled and installed. But the primary purpose of this book is to show you how to take full advantage of mod_perl: how to make a mod_perl-enabled Web site as fast, flexible, and easily-maintainable as possible. The authors draw from their own personal experience in the field, as well as the combined experience of the mod_perl community, to present a rich and complete picture of how to set up and maintain a successful mod_perl site.

This book is also the first book to cover the "next generation" of mod_perl: mod_perl 2.0, a completely rewritten version of mod_perl designed for integration with Apache 2.0, which for the first time supports threads.

The book covers the following topics, and more:

• Configuring mod_perl optimally for your web site
• Porting and optimizing programs for a mod_perl environment
• Performance tuning: getting the very fastest performance from your site
• Controlling and monitoring the server to circumvent crashes and clogs
• Integrating with databases efficiently and painlessly
• Debugging tips and tricks
• Maximizing security

Written for Perl web developers and web administrators, Practical mod_perl is an extensive guide to the nuts and bolts of the powerful and popular combination of Apache and mod_perl. From writing and debugging scripts to keeping your server running without failures, the techniques in this book will help you squeeze every ounce of power out of your server. True to its title, this is the practical guide to mod_perl.

Programming Perl, 3rd Edition

£28.40

Larry Wall,Tom Christiansen and Jon Orwant; ISBN: 0-596-00027-8

Perl is a powerful programming language that has grown in popularity since it first appeared in 1988. The first edition of this book, Programming Perl, hit the shelves in 1990, and was quickly adopted as the undisputed bible of the language. Since then, Perl has grown with the times, and so has this book.

Programming Perl is not just a book about Perl. It is also a unique introduction to the language and its culture, as one might expect only from its authors. Larry Wall is the inventor of Perl, and provides a unique perspective on the evolution of Perl and its future direction. Tom Christiansen was one of the first champions of the language, and lives and breathes the complexities of Perl internals as few other mortals do. Jon Orwant is the editor of

The Perl Journal, which has brought together the Perl community as a common forum for new developments in Perl.

Any Perl book can show the syntax of Perl's functions, but only this one is a comprehensive guide to all the nooks and crannies of the language. Any Perl book can explain typeglobs, pseudohashes, and closures, but only this one shows how they really work. Any Perl book can say that my is faster than local, but only this one explains why. Any Perl book can have a title, but only this book is affectionately known by all Perl programmers as "The Camel."

This third edition of Programming Perl has been expanded to cover version 5.6 of this maturing language. New topics include threading, the compiler, Unicode, and other new features that have been added since the previous edition.

Programming Web Services with Perl

£22.80

Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko; ISBN: 0-596-00206-8

Given Perl's natural fit for web applications development, it's no surprise that Perl is also a natural choice for web services development. It's the most popular web programming language, with strong implementations of both SOAP and XML-RPC, the leading ways to distribute applications using web services. But books on web services focus on writing these applications in Java or Visual Basic, leaving Perl programmers with few resources to get them started. Programming Web Services with Perl changes that, bringing Perl users all the information they need to create web services using their favorite language.

Programming Web Services with Perl steers clear of the hype surrounding web services and concentrates on what is useful and practical. The book introduces the major web services standards, such as XML-RPC, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, and shows how to implement Perl servers and clients using these standards. You'll find detailed references on both the XML and SOAP toolkits, and learn when to use one technology in favor of the other. The book is rich with programming examples that you'll find useful well past the learning stage. And, moving beyond the basics, the book offers solutions to problems of security, authentication, and scalability.

Some of the topics covered in the book are:

• HTTP and XML basics
• XML-RPC and the toolkits
• SOAP and toolkits
• SOAP::Lite
• Using SOAP with SMTP and other protocols
• Advertising and discovering with UDDI and WSDL
• The REST methodology
• The future of web services

Programming Web Services with Perl was written for Perl programmers who have no prior knowledge of web services. You can pick up this book without any understanding of XML-RPC or SOAP and be able to apply these technologies easily, through the use of publicly available Perl modules detailed in the book.

If you're interested in applying XML-RPC and SOAP technologies to distributed programming applications, then Programming Web Services with Perl is a book you'll want to have.

Programming the Perl DBI

£19.96

Alligator Descartes and Tim Bunce; ISBN: 1-56592-699-4

One of the greatest strengths of the Perl programming language is its ability to manipulate large amounts of data. Database programming is therefore a natural fit for Perl, not only for business applications but also for CGI-based web and intranet applications.

The primary interface for database programming in Perl is DBI. DBI is a database-independent package that provides a consistent set of routines regardless of what database product you use--Oracle, Sybase, Ingres, Informix, you name it. The design of DBI is to separate the actual database drivers (DBDs) from the programmer's API, so any DBI program can work with any database, or even with multiple databases by different vendors simultaneously.

Programming the Perl DBI is coauthored by Alligator Descartes, one of the most active members of the DBI community, and by Tim Bunce, the inventor of DBI. For the uninitiated, the book explains the architecture of DBI and shows you how to write DBI-based programs. For the experienced DBI dabbler, this book reveals DBI's nuances and the peculiarities of each individual DBD.

The book includes:

• An introduction to DBI and its design
• How to construct queries and bind parameters
• Working with database, driver, and statement handles
• Debugging techniques
• Coverage of each existing DBD
• A complete reference to DBI

This is the definitive book for database programming in Perl.

Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk

£22.80

Jon Orwant; ISBN: 0-596-00311-0

In its first five years of existence, The Perl Journal (TPJ) became the voice of the Perl community. Every serious Perl programmer subscribed to it, and every notable Perl guru jumped at the opportunity to write for it. TPJ explained critical Perl topics and demonstrated Perl's utility for fields as diverse as astronomy, biology, economics, AI, and games. Back issues were hoarded, or swapped like trading cards. No longer in print format, The Perl Journal remains a proud and timeless achievement of Perl during one of its most exciting periods of development.

Web, Graphics & Perl/Tk is the second volume of The Best of the Perl Journal, compiled and re-edited by the original editor and publisher of The Perl Journal, Jon Orwant. In this series, we've taken the very best (and still relevant) articles published in TPJ over its five years of publication and immortalized them into three volumes.

The forty articles included in this volume are simply some of the best Perl articles ever written on the subjects of graphics, the Web, and Perl/Tk, by some of the best Perl authors and coders.

Much of Perl's success is due to its capabilities for developing web sites; the Web section covers popular topics such as CGI programs, mod_perl, spidering, HTML parsing, security, and content management. The Graphics section is a grab bag of techniques, ranging from simple graph generation to ray tracing and real-time video digitizing. The Perl/Tk section shows you how to use the popular Perl/Tk toolkit for developing graphical applications that work on both Unix/Linux and Windows without a single change.

Written by twenty-three of the most prominent and prolific members of the closely-knit Perl community, including Lincoln Stein, Mark-Jason Dominus, Alligator Descartes, and Dan Brian, this anthology does what no other book can, giving unique insight into the real-life applications and powerful techniques made possible by Perl.

Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C

£22.80

Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern; ISBN: 1-56592-567-X

Apache is the most popular web server on the Internet because it is free, reliable, and extensible. The availability of the source code and the modular design of Apache makes it possible to extend web server functionality through the Apache API.

For the most part, however, the Apache API has only been available to C programmers, and requires rebuilding the Apache server from source. mod_perl, the popular Apache module used primarily for enhanced CGI performance, changed all that by making the Apache API available to Perl programmers. With mod_perl, it becomes simple to develop Apache modules with Perl and install them without having to rebuild the web server.

Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C shows how to extend web server capabilities regardless of whether the programming language is Perl or C. The book explains the design of Apache, mod_perl, and the Apache API. It then demonstrates how to use them to perform for tasks like the following:

• Rewriting CGI scripts as Apache modules to vastly improve performance
• Server-side filtering of HTML documents, to embed special markup or code (much like SSI)
• Enhancing server log functionality
• Converting file formats on the fly
• Implementing dynamic navigation bars
• Incorporating database access into CGI scripts
• Customizing access control and authorization to block robots or to use an external database for passwords

The authors are Lincoln Stein and Doug MacEachern. Lincoln is the successful author of How to Set Up and Maintain a World Wide web Site and the developer of the widely used Perl CGI.pm module. Doug is a consultant and the creator of the innovative mod_perl Apache module.