Accessing IBM DB2-400 without Client Connect

Hello, I am a newbie at php with experience at perl trying to select between using perl and DBI DB2:DBD and php to provide access to a back end DB2 database on an AS/400 from a web server. According to IBM (as I understand them), no matter what someone does on the front end, any script must access an IBM DB2 client such as Connect in order to talk to the DB2 engine, even using ODBC. WHile this may have some benefits, it also seems to add a good deal of overhead..... The various FAQs on php suggest that php can speak directly to DB2 via the ODBC modules (though without actually using ODBC). Are there examples of this somewhere that can be accessed or someone on the list with some success in accomplishing this.............. Thanks