PeterKaagman:

It's hard to see how $sth_update wouldn't execute if you're seeing the "Doing update" message. How do you know it's not executing? Could a later update be overwriting the data from an earlier update?

I'd suggest making your traces a little more informative, so you can see what's happening:

 if (! $sth_insert->execute(
                                $$data{'id'},
                                $$data{'name'}
                               ) ) {

      print 'Insert error: '.$sth_insert->errstr if $debug;
      print "Doing update (name: $$data{name}, id: $$data{id})\n";
      $sth_update->execute(
                                $$data{'name'},
                                $$data{'id'}
                          ) or die("Insert and Update failed, update: 
+".$sth_update->errstr );
 }
 else {
    print "Inserted (name: $$data{name}, id:$$data{id})\n";
 }
[download]

Then you can verify that the values in the table match the last value for the ID found in your debug traces.

...roboticus

When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.