I would note that Perl does ship with support for simple hash-based databases through the
DB module. The reason as to why Perl doesn't incorporate
DBI and
DBI-based module support within the core distribution, is most likely due to the wide variety of databases, access methods and libraries which are available for various databases - Which databases should be supported in the core? MySQL? mSQL? PostgreSQL? Oracle? SQLite? Sybase? What version of libraries for each database? Do we include pure-perl versions as well as XS versions?
There are many people who would argue that the core distribution is already bloated - The addition of support for the many databases and libraries available would only grow the distribution further.
perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001010110000'"