Professional Perl Development

Perl is not only the scripting language of choice for many people, but a powerful programming language that can be used to develop serious applications. Backed by numerous libraries, this language is capable of performing just about any task.

This book examines the Perl libraries that are most interesting to developers of professional, real-world applications. It covers web client and server programming, manipulating data in databases and LDAP servers, network and distributed programming, embedding Perl into web pages (templates, HTML::Mason, HTML::Embperl, Apache::ASP, and PerlScript), mathematical and computational applications, graphics and GUI programming, and creating and manipulating XML.

Randy Kobes works in the Physics Department at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Canada. As well as teaching, he does research on non-linear phenomena such as chaotic systems and fractals.

Peter Wainwright is a freelance developer and software consultant. He got his first taste of programming on a BBC Micro and gained most of his early programming experience writing applications in C on Solaris. He then discovered Linux, shortly followed by Perl and Apache, and has been happily programming there ever since. Outside of the software industry he is a partner of Space Future Consulting, an international space tourism consultancy firm.He is also an advisor to the board of one or two companies engaged in space tourism and vehicle development. If you have $50m to spare, he would like to have a word with you. As well as being the primary author of 'Professional Perl', he is the author of 'Professional Apache', also published by Wrox Press, as well as a contributing author to 'Beginning Perl'.

Shishir Gundavaram is the Director of Technology for MechanicNet.com, a company that specializes in providing services for the automotive repair and maintenance industry; the automotive after-market. When he is not dealing with auto mechanics and broken down cars, Shishir consults for a number of Internet start-ups, designing architecture and providing technical expertise. He has over a decade of experience in various aspects of Web and software application development, and is considered a foremost expert in wireless applications, electronic commerce, distributed systems and Web back-end architecture. He is also the author of various articles and books for O'Reilly and Associates, including, CGI Programming with Perl, CGI Programming on the World Wide Web and Scripting Languages: Automating the Web, and has spoken at numerous conferences throughout the world.

Adrian Arva is a senior Web developer who loves to use Perl in his work. Adrian holds a degree in medicine from Iasi University, Romania. He works in Iasi and Bucharest as a consultant for the Romanian Government.

Gavin Brown was born in 1977 in Maidstone, Kent. He studied Physics at the University of Kent at Canterbury and thereafter pursued a career in teaching. He is now a Web developer for Church International, an IT recruitment consultancy and training company. He is active within the talker community where he uses the handle "Jodrell", and can often by found on the Uberworld talker (telnet://uberworld.org:2020).

Arthur Corliss has been programming since buying his first home computer a Timex Sinclair 1000 with a whopping 2K of RAM (which he still has). Having worked his way through several languages, Perl has become his most frequent language of choice at his latest venture, Gallant Technologies, Inc., a software development company. In his own time he continues the madness by working on the Curses::Widgets and Curses::Forms modules, which he authored and is available on CPAN.

Joshua Ellis is a senior software engineer for Dynamic Software, a software development and system integration firm based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. His experience includes development, system administration, and computer security consulting on Unix and Windows NT systems. He has implemented numerous systems using Perl, both on and off the web.

Pancrazio de Mauro has been a Perl enthusiast since 1992, back in the times when he was looking for the ideal Practical Extraction and Report Language. He has never changed his mind since. He has worked with a number of Italian and Australian companies as network and Web engineer, always trying to exploit Perl to its full potential. He has taught the language in technical training courses and talked about it in articles for Italian and international magazines. He's currently managing advanced technology and e-commerce projects where Perl plays a fundamental role. He welcomes comments and questions at the address p@demauro.net.

Simon Oliver was born in 1967 in Manchester, England. He left school at the age of 16 and began work as a university technician whilst studying chemistry and then later, applied biology on a part-time basis. He is now a computer officer at UMIST (the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) where he manages the IT facilities for the Department of Biomolecular Sciences. He is particularly interested in Perl, Relational Databases, and Web development.

Mark Wilcox is the Web Administrator and LDAP Consultant for the University of North Texas. He is a frequent writer and speaker on LDAP and directory services. Also, Mark is one of the few people to have been paid to write open source software.