Well anything you know about flat file systems you can throw out. DBI is a completely different system... Instead of lengthy algorithms for opening, perusing through files, etc., you just call DBI functions on a database handle, use plain English (hence the name SQL), and MySQL does the dirty work. Your 100 line + plain Perl database routines can be simplified down to less than 5.

Overall, SQL is quick to pick up on. Once you've learned the basics, you ought to be able to convert your old CSV systems to SQL pretty quickly.

--Philip
Links 2.0 moderator