5.2 Perl-based Conduit

The Perl-based Conduit is listed in the advanced topics as you actually would hardly need it anymore and it is only referenced for your convenience as it still exists (for historical reasons) and of course still works. You can use it to transfer your database to your Palm OS handheld device. It is useful in several scenarios:

• You want to sync Plucker as well as several other data to your Palm OS handheld device using some other conduit written using pilot-links famous Perl interface. In this case it is possible to move several different data with only pressing hotsync once. This is not possible using the output to a pdb as you would need to transfer your data with e.g. pilot-link (press hotsync for the first time) and then this program ends the connection to your PDA and after that you can fire up your other conduits.

• As it is Perl based you might want to use it to build your own conduit for Pilot-Manager e.g.

• It can serve you as a sample on how to create, delete and write databases on your handheld

• In case of very limited RAM. This sounds somewhat strange, but the Perl conduit works completely different than the pdb output. The Perl conduit assembles the database on the device itself while it syncs the records to it, that is you sync on a per record basis. Now if you have several databases to sync but low free RAM on your device the Perl conduit will not refuse to sync in a database even if it does not fit to your device completely. It will simply sync in the data till you are out of memory and any remaining records are left out. This will lead to a effective use of every byte. But you should be aware of two points here:
  1. If some records are missing you will get an external reference-error even if the documents where plucked originally.

  2. Since you already have low free space on your device it might happen that the conduit syncs in as many datasets that you are unable to open even your home document. In this case you need to free up RAM using the database manager.
  That is why we consider the use of the Perl conduit in low RAM conditions as an hazardous task better left to advanced users. The Perl conduit has absolutely no problem with syncing in data till you even can not add a new appointment or phone number. You should be aware of how to handle this.