I'm still a newbie here on Perl Monks, but I think you'd be well advised to save yourself the trouble and not post long C programs before asking short questions to which other Monks can provide short answers!

If you're using ActiveState Perl on Windows platforms, might I also suggest using the Start Menu, Find Files, Containing Text feature on the c:\perl\html directory. This will search all online documentation and you just have to double-click each found file and read it. I've found this very useful myself. BTW, Unix users could use grep.

Update: Sorry to suggest you should try to use a Windows platform! I wish I had a Sun box at work and wasn't forced to use Windows. I believe the DBI::ODBC advice was still valid. I did read your message carefully, but I guess you have no choice but to stay on a Sun box. Please forgive me if I offended you somehow. Was was trying to suggest an alternative approach and the ActiveState's HTML based documentation is very well organized overall IMO.