## 2.13 Perl Installation Notes

[2.13.1 Installing Perl on Unix](perl-installation.html)
[2.13.2 Installing ActiveState Perl on Windows](activestate-perl.html)
[2.13.3 Problems Using the Perl DBI/DBD Interface](perl-support-problems.html)

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 The Perl `DBI` module provides a generic interface for database access. You can write a `DBI` script that works with many different database engines without change. To use `DBI`, you must install the `DBI` module, as well as a DataBase Driver (DBD) module for each type of database server you want to access. For MySQL, this driver is the `DBD::mysql` module.

Note

 Perl support is not included with MySQL distributions. You can obtain the necessary modules from [http://search.cpan.org](http://search.cpan.org) for Unix, or by using the ActiveState **ppm** program on Windows. The following sections describe how to do this.

 The `DBI`/`DBD` interface requires Perl 5.6.0, and 5.6.1 or later is preferred. DBI *does not work* if you have an older version of Perl. You should use `DBD::mysql` 4.009 or higher. Although earlier versions are available, they do not support the full functionality of MySQL 8.0.

