Re: [GENERAL] DBI/DBD-Pg/perl question

On Sat, 4 Jul 1998, Brian wrote:

> I have a server which runs Postgres 6.3 under linux. On this system perl,
> DBI-0.93, and DBD-Pg are installed. This machine can do accesses and
> operations to the database with no problems. This machine is called
> "earth".
>
> What I am wanting to do, is allow say 20 other machines access to this
> database via Perl/DBI/DBD.
>
> Do I have to install Postgres-6.3 on *every* machine that I want to be
> able to access the Postgres database on earth, or is there a way to just
> compile DBD/DBI/perl on these "client only" machines?
>
> The docs for DBD-Pg say you need to install Postgres-6.3 on the machine
> for DBD-Pg to work. I am just trying to find out if this is really
> necessary, is there such a thing as a "client only" installation of
> Postgres that is a little smaller maybe? If I have to install
> Postgres-6.3 on every machine i guess I will, I just didn't want to
> maintain that many different copies of one program.

For DBI/DBD to work, you'll need libpq, which contains the actual code to
interface with PostgreSQL. It should be possible to only install (ie.
copy) libpq.{a|so} and the necessary include-files to those machines, and
then install the DBD driver. You could probably put all the necessary
files in a .tar.gz file (write a little script to do this), so it's easy
to distribute those files (and to keep the machines up-to-date when you
upgrade PostgreSQL).

Maybe it's an idea to include such a script in the main distribution. It
should place all necessary libraries and include-files, and maybe the
user tools like psql.

If you're running a Debian/Linux system, you're in luck. There already
exist the necessary packages (libpgsql, libpgperl (postgresql specific),
libdbi-perl, couldn't find libdbi-pgsql however, someone should create this).

Maarten

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