DBIx::Recordset - Perl extension for DBI recordsets

Copyright (c) 1997-1998 Gerald Richter / ECOS

You may distribute under the terms of either the GNU General Public 
License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.
For use with Apache httpd and mod_perl, see also Apache copyright.

THIS IS BETA SOFTWARE!

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED 
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF 
MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.


OVERVIEW

DBIx::Recordset is a perl module, which should make it easier to access a set
of records in a database.
It should make standard database access (select/insert/update/delete)
easier to handle (e.g. web application or scripts to enter/retrieve
data to/from a database). Special attention is made on web applications to make
it possible to handle the state-less access and to process the posted data
of formfields.
The programmer only has to supply the absolutely necessary information, the
rest is done by DBIx::Recordset.

You can access (read and write) the database (or a selected subset) as an
array or you can access it as a hash, where the hashkey is the primary key
of the databasetable. (like Lincoln Stein's Tie::DBI http://stein.cshl.org/~lstein/Tie-DBI/).
A record is represented as a hash, which contains one entry per field.

DBIx::Recordset use the DBI API to access the database, so it should work with
every database for which a DBD driver is available (see also DBIx::Compat)


For more information look at perldoc DBIx::Recordset.

NOTE 1: This is the first public release, so some features and
        performance optimisations are still outstanding.

NOTE 2: For use with HTML::Embperl you need version 0.27-beta or higher

INSTALLATION

As usual start with

perl Makefile.PL

The makefile tries to detecd your installed DBD drivers and asks you
for a database for performing the tests. The database must exist before
the make test can run!

Now you are ready todo a

make

and

make test

if make test runs ok, do a make install and you are ready. If not you should
check if a entry for your DBD driver exists in the file Compat.pm.
If not create one. For more information how todo this look at

perldoc Compat

Currently there are entries for
- DBD::mSQL
- DBD::mysql
- DBD::Pg
- DBD::Solid
- DBD::ODBC

If you create your own entry please send it to me, so I can include it
in the next release.

After changing the Compat.pm rerun make test to make sure it works!

If you don't get make test to work for you, please send me the file
test.log (Normaly it should be enought to send the part for the test,
that fails) along with the versions of DBI and the DBD driver you are using.


EXAMPLES

The perldoc DBIx::Recordset contains a lot of examples for function calls.
The directory eg/ contains examples for HTML::Embperl and CGI.pm
Also you can look at test.pl, which should use most aspects of DBIx::Recordset



SUPPORT

As far as possible for me, support will be available directly from me or via the
DBI Users mailinglist.