my $dbh = try {
      DBI->connect(
         $conn_string,
         $props{USER},
         $props{PWD},
         {
            PrintError => 0,
            RaiseError => 1,
         },
      )
   } otherwise {
      throw Error::Database -text => (
         $DBI::errstr
         || $@
         || "Unknown Error: '$conn_string'"
      );
   };

   $dbh->{HandleError} = sub { throw Error::Database -text => $DBI::errstr };

   return $dbh;

##</code><code>##

package Error::Database;

################################################################################

use 5.6.0;

use strict;
use warnings;

################################################################################

# This is a baseclass I use for extending the standard Error class in ways that don't matter here.
use Error::Base;
our @ISA = qw(Error::Base);

################################################################################

sub new
{
   my $class = shift;
   my $self = $class->SUPER::new(@_) || return undef;

   my $txt = $self->text;

   if ($txt =~ /text=([^=]+)./)
   {
      $self->{-text} = $1;
   }
   elsif ($txt =~ /Message String: (.*?)$/)
   {
      $self->{-text} = $1;
   }

   return $self;
}

1;