Quoting from "Programming the Perl DBI" book by Alligator Descartes & Tim Bunce,
"The DBI is the standard interface for the Perl programming language. The DBI is database- independent, which means that it can work with just about any database, such as Oracle, Sybase, Informix, Access, MySQL, etc."
On that page you will find many great resources to get you going with DBI. However, that page does not provide a way to download the DBI and related DBD modules - for that see below.
For downloading, * find the Perl Database Interfaces page at
* the DBI module is on that same page - just click on the "DBI" link - it will take you to the general "DBI" page - this page has loads of excellent information.
Notice at the top of this page, the title looks like
Tim Bunce > DBI-1.30 > DBI
Click on the latest version(DBI-1.30) link to go to the...latest DBI version page. On that page you will be able to download the current version. That page also lists links to other DBI modules and documenation.
* and find all the DBD(database specific) modules at
You'll need at least the "DBI" module, and the "DBD" module corresponding to your particular database, to get started.
One of the great things that the Perl DBI does for you is gives you portablility - you write your code to the DBI spec, and with very few changes, you can change the database from MySQL to Oracle(or whatever), and that same DBI code will still work. Of course that's assuming that you keep your SQL along "standard" lines, and you don't take advantage of the "non-standard" features that your database might offer.