my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:DriverName:db_name", $user, $password, {
    RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit => 0
});

##</code><code>##

Type: boolean, inherited

The RaiseError attribute can be used to force errors to raise exceptions rather than simply return error codes in the normal way. It is "off" by default. When set "on", any method which results in an error will cause the DBI to effectively do a die("$class $method failed: $DBI::errstr"), where $class is the driver class and $method is the name of the method that failed. E.g.,

DBD::Oracle::db prepare failed: ... error text here ...