wabranty, since you are starting off, I'd seriously give some thought at checking out DBI and the DBD drivers. DBI has become the de facto database interface for all your perl needs. While Win32::ODBC works on Win (doh), DBI will run on virtually all platforms provided you have the requirements to load the correct database driver (read DBD).

On Win, you can use almost the same amount of drivers (DBD::Oracle, DBD::mysql, DBD::CSV, etc) and if you run out of options on DBD's, there is always DBD::ODBC. The nice thing about DBI is works cross-platform, cross-database! You can develop on one database/platform and deliver on another entirely diferent system.

Tim Bunce should probably hire me as a marketing guy for DBI, since I think this is the 3rd time or so that I answer a Win32::ODBC question by pointing towards DBI. Beleive me when I say its well worth the shot!

#!/home/bbq/bin/perl
# Trust no1!