My best suggestion is to encapsulate. You shouldn't have to put code like:

my $params = {    DataSource      =>      'dbi:mysql:sessions',
                UserName        =>      'root',
                Password        =>      '',
                LockDataSource  =>      'dbi:mysql:sessions',
                LockUserName    =>      'root',
                LockPassword    =>      ''
};
my %session;

eval {
        tie (%session, 'Apache::Session::MySQL', $sess_id, $params);
};
tie (%session, 'Apache::Session::MySQL', undef, $params) if ( $@ );
#etcetera
[download]

That should all be shoved into a MySessions module and replaced with:

use CGI;
use MySessions;

my $q=new CGI;

MySessions->connect();
my $session=MySessions->retrieve($q->cookie(-name => 'sess_id'));
#etcetera
[download]

=cut
--Brent Dax
There is no sig.