Hi folks!

I started working on a small web application that shows reports based on data in a Sybase database.

The application will run on Linux or Solaris, but development is on win32 ( :-( ) for the moment.

When the first script was ready, I tested it on the commandline. Easy piece thanks to CGI.
Ok, time to have it served by Apache: Server Error!

Ahh! Apache thinks it is clever not to pass environment variables to cgi scripts and that's perfectly ok! But I need the SYBASE variable.
Ok, there's the old hack: Place a BEGIN block at the start of the script, set the SYBASE variable in it, and everything's fine.

So I thought, but it didn't work.

I unset the SYBASE variable in a command window and stripped down the script to the smallest working piece and got this to prove the failure:

#!/perl/bin/perl -w

BEGIN {
  $ENV{SYBASE} = 'c:\w03g\sybase\r120500';
}

use strict;
use warnings;

use DBI;

system('echo %SYBASE%');
my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:Sybase:server=myserver',
                       'user',
                       'password'
                      ) or die "could not connect";

# die message cut down here for shortness.
[download]

This yields the error:

The context allocation routine failed when it tried to load localizati
+on files!!<br>
One or more following problems may caused the failure<p>

Your sybase home directory is as. Check the environment variable SYBAS
+E if it is not the one you want!<br>
Cannot access file as\ini\objectid.dat<br>
install_driver(Sybase) failed: DBD::Sybase initialize: cs_ctx_alloc() 
+failed at C:/Perl/lib/DynaLoader.pm line 225.<br>
Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3.
[download]

This is on WinNT SP6, ActiveState Perl 5.6.1 Build 626. DBD::Sybase 0.91

I knew that the BEGIN hack was working on Linux. Being too lazy to start the Linux box and the Sybase server on it, I tried the script on a Sun box running Solaris 2.8.

I unset the SYBASE variable, started the script and everything was fine.

So why doesn't the BEGIN hack work on win32?

p.s.: I managed to convince Apache to pass the SYBASE variable with 'PassEnv SYBASE' in the config file.