I want to have a go at building a website which will interact with a database, probably MYSQL. I have done a little Perl but it seems that most people would use PHP for this. What would I be better having a go with Perl or PHP? Any advice would be gratefully received. I have a lot of SQL and PL/SQL experience if that helps?
Whichever you're more comfortable with - I personally prefer PHP, as I've not done much Perl. There's also the superb MySQL section on php.net to guide you
PHP is a more modern framework, you would probably find your knowlege more future proof if you learnt it. I've had problems running CGI on one particular server that ran out of memory- each time a script is called it spawns a new process. I don't think PHP has this problem as it runs as one process that can take many clients. Also there is going to be more built in functionality to help you with common tasks in PHP than Perl. Justin
With Perl 6 coming with a proper OO framework, I'd say they are about equal there. The only time I've run a webserver out of memory was trying to parse a 80mb XML file for someone, which ended up been a problem with one of the Perl XML modules (since fixed). Had it working fine in the end by parsing the XML myself rather than relying on a third party module. You realy should look a CPAN as there seems to be a Perl module for any task you care to mention, and probably quite a few that you wouldn't dean_e_boy, if you've done some Perl in the past, have a look at the DBI::MySQL on CPAN as it makes MYSQL access from within Perl a doddle.
