Magazine Articles

Perl, PHP, and Python are used in many software projects today due to their flexibility, simplicity, portability and extensibility. To help you gain a better understanding of their popularity with Open Source developers, this article takes you through a tour of the important features and functions of Perl and Python. Using these language extensions in combination with IBM's� DB2� database and with Web services provided through the Google APIs, they build a client and server-side application in both Perl and Python.

Although there are many excellent Perl modules dealing with many aspects of XML (among which a good dozen offer various ways of transforming XML documents), the languages that seem to be favored by XML developers are Java, C/C++, and maybe even Python. For example, questions on the XML-DEV list mostly involve Java, C++, and XSLT. Sun, IBM, and Microsoft all push Java or C++ implementations. Perl, the choice of many for programming on the Web, lags behind Java and C++ in the XML popularity contest. Michel Rodriguez shares his opinions on what's wrong, and what could be done about it.