Description:
Perl tends to be talked about as a cross between a religion and a programming language. It has a lot going for it: in particular, it's free and available on most platforms. ActivePerl is Perl implemented as an ActiveX component, enabling its use as an ASP scripting language for IIS. Using ActivePerl rather than Perl with CGI takes up fewer server resources. ActivePerl with ASP and ADO is aimed at Windows developers, though it isn't obvious why they'd want to use Perl rather than Microsoft's native VBScript. This text explains the basics of the Perl language, along with ASP and ADO, but you really need more than this book if you're going to realize the full power of Perl as an ASP-scripting language. On the ASP side, the book provides good explanations of how and why things happen and how to make them happen the way you want them to. It discusses statefulness and cookies, along with simple ASP pages and database connectivity. The text discusses ADO usage in depth--including such esoterica as converting between ActivePerl scripts and command-line Perl for more efficient client-data presentations. The book ends with the Record object, a hierarchical data structure, followed by appendices--which include a collection of useful scripts. ActivePerl and all the code is on the companion CD-ROM. ActivePerl with ASP and ADO is authoritative and its author is clearly an expert, but pity the poor beginner who has to master all three languages at once. Despite the roller-coaster ride, the book is well structured and provides a concise source for Windows developers looking to move to a more powerful scripting language. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.uk
|