Disabling Apache::DBI

I have multiple mod_perl applications running within one Apache instance. For most of these applications, I want to use Apache::DBI, but I want to disable it for just one. According to various Web pages, this is not possible, because Apache::DBI attaches itself to all DBI->connect() calls. I would have to run my app in a separate Apache instance that excludes Apache::DBI.

It looks like it actually is possible to disable Apache::DBI. Apache::DBI will not be used for a specific DBI connection if its DBI->connect() has a special value set for the dbi_connect_method attribute, as in:

$dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:...', '...', '...', { dbi_connect_method => 'connect' } );

Could somebody verify that this is a sane and future-proof approach?

>From my reading of the DBI.pm source code, this works because DBI defaults to using its own connect() method, then switches to Apache::DBI::connect() if Apache::DBI is in use, and finally, looks for the "dbi_connect_method" attribute. By setting this attribute to the original default, "connect", Apache::DBI is neatly bypassed.

This would be more elegant if a future version of DBI were to include support for a "disable_apache_dbi" attribute. I think this might involve just a simple addition to DBI::connect().

Ted Behling, ISP Systems Analyst
Hargray Communications
ted.behling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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