I'm working on a project for work. I've got a bunch of sales data that's stored on our AS/400 in flat files. Why flat files? Because the bulk of the code was originally written in 1986, but that's beside the point at the moment. I need to get that data into an SQL2005 server. Why SQL2005? Because it makes my life easier when writing .NET code, and because SQL Express is also free.

Currently, I can easily pull the data, at regular intervals, into a MySQL database using bits of Perl code I've written over the years. This works pretty well for those tasks, but interfacing with MySQL in .NET just isn't as pleasant. So I need to find a new solution.

The Problems:

• Interfacing with SQL2005 (or 2000) is hard to do from Unix.
• Running Perl code by itself isn't as practical on a Windows box, because it lacks cron.

The best solution I've come up with uses 2-3 steps, and that's not acceptable. I've downloaded ActiveState's Perl Dev Kit to give it a try. It has a .NET component builder so I may just be able to use my perl code from within the .NET app to access the data. That may just be easier in the long run.