From: "Ara.T.Howard" <Ara.T.Howard@...>
Date: 2004-07-16T01:52:20+09:00
Subject: scripting language (fwd)


got this from a friend... any thoughts?

-a
--
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| EMAIL   :: Ara [dot] T [dot] Howard [at] noaa [dot] gov
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| and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. 
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2004 09:33:35 -0700 (PDT)
To: Ara.T.Howard <Ara.T.Howard@noaa.gov>
Subject: scripting language

Hey A-

I'm investigating alternative scripting languages.  We
currently use Perl almost exclusively (except
sometimes some ksh) but would like to consider a
language that is friendlier with the JVM.  It also has
to have an LDAP API and an Oracle API, without
requiring C coding (we don't have C coders here).

My first task is to write a trivial script that
selects one row from an Oracle database.  I installed
ruby for windows.  I downloaded & installed ruby DBD,
which says it requires ruby OCI, which doesn't come in
binary form (i.e. requires me to compile it with a c
compiler, which I don't have on my windows box).

That's probably more rigamarole than several of these
other languages require.  And the libraries themselves
seem to be mostly alpha software with the last update
sometime in 2003.

I'm struck by the elegance of ruby and I'd really like
to try and make it work, but am having a hard time
fitting it into the production realities of our shop.
I'm getting the impression that a C shop could really
take the language and run with it, but a
cobol/SQL/java shop like ours may be out of luck.  Do
you have any encouraging words/links before I move on?

J