Perl Dev Kit and Visual Perl

ActiveState is selling 2 products to integrate with Microsoft's .NET Framework and Visual Studio. The first is Perl Dev Kit ($195) and the second is Visual Perl ($295).

Perl Dev Kit this link will exit this site includes PerlNET which allows you to use the .NET Framework class library from Perl scripts but also allow C# programs to extend Perl modules and invoke Perl methods.

Visual Perl this link will exit this site allows Perl developers to use the Visual Studio IDE to write and debug Perl code. My only complaint is that these two products are not bundled as one. You can evaluate Perl Dev Kit for 7 days this link will exit this site and Visual Perl for 21 days this link will exit this site.

Products

"Perl-powered" Webteacher's Webdata - is a web database program which can be easily installed and administrated without requiring any programming skills. Webdata requires Perl on your web server.

Links

A Perl Glossary - is hosted by Perl Mongers, the Perl advocacy people.

Learn Perl - The site for people learning Perl.

The Perl Job site - , If you're looking to work with Perl, or looking for the best Perl talent, this is one site on the web that can help you with both.

O'Reilly's Perl.com - is The Source for Perl.

Perl

Perl is one of the most important languages on the Web, but due to it's open-source roots it often goes unnoticed. Many UNIX and Linux installations use Perl for administration and Web automation. Perl is starting to become popular on Microsoft platforms. In fact Microsoft sells Perl as part of the SFU (Services For Unix) product.

ActiveState offers a Perl port, ActivePerl, that is similar to what Red Hat does for Linux. ActivePerl is easy to install, it is bundled with PPM (Perl Package Manager) that upgrades your Perl installation easily over the Web, and includes online HTML documentation that updates itself when you install new packages using PPM. ActivePerl includes SOAP and XML packages in the default installation. ActivePerl runs on Windows, Solaris, and Red Hat Linux.

Apache web server includes hooks to make Perl scripts run faster called mod_perl. Perl also ships built-in on Solaris 8, Sun Microsystem's latest UNIX operating system. Solaris 8 includes Java and Perl but not C or C++.

Download Perl

Perl is the most portable language and has been ported to the most operating systems then almost any other language. Since Perl is written in C, C probably beats Perl. CPAN (Central Perl Archive Network) keeps a list of Perl ports. Your Perl script will run on more operating systems then Java. But Java definitely wins on the influential operating systems. According to CPAN, Perl does not run on Palm OS, but according to InfoWorld Palm OS 4.0 will ship with Java built-in. Palm OS has a list of development kits for Java, unfortunately none for Perl.

Perl for System Administrators

So where is Perl at its best? Probably system administration. Talk to any sysadmin, especially UNIX and Linux admins, and they either write Perl or use Perl scripts written by others to maintain their organization's computer systems. Perl is also starting to become a tool for NT and Windows 2000 admins.

Perl on the Web

But Perl will always be a favorite of web developers. Almost every web hosting company offers Perl script functionality, only a small percentage offer Java Servlets or JSP.

To learn more about Perl check out the Perl web site at www.perl.com.