Perl programming

Perl is a programming language used for over 12 years in many of the software development projects done by Castle Amber. Its excellent data processing capabilities and outstanding libraries available as Perl modules via the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) result in rapid development of dedicated tools written in Perl.

Perl, our first choice

Perl also is often the first language of choice for prototyping if no graphical user interface is required. In most cases the speed of the Perl programming language is more than sufficient to handle the tasks and a final implementation in a compiled programming language is not needed.

Perl help via MSN Messenger

Recently we started to give customers Perl support via MSN Messenger.

Object Oriented Programming and code reuse

For most programming work, Object Oriented Programming (OOP) is used to create robust solutions. Since reinventing the wheel is not our business, Perl modules from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN) are used where possible in our solutions that use the Perl programming language.

CGI scripts

Castle Amber has performed the following tasks on CGI scripts written in the Perl programming language:

security audits
speed up by using improved code (less server load)
increased readability
added extensive documentation
modified to requirements of customer
replaced code with usage of libraries
improved overall quality of the code
interfacing with databases, like MySQL, using DBI

Perl applications

Besides CGI solutions, Perl has been used to create many other custom made programs like system administration tools, office automation, text analysing tools, document generation etc.

Some of those Perl programs use either wxWindows (wxWidgets) using the wxPerl extension module, or Tk to provide the user with a graphical user interface (GUI).

We have experience with Perl application deployment using the Perl Archive toolkit (PAR). With PAR is it also possible to combine the perl executable, the perl script(s), and all required Perl modules in one stand alone executable.

Cross platform Perl solutions

Because Castle Amber uses a wide range of operating systems running Perl, there is quite some experience with creating cross platform solutions.