I agree. In the original code, not so much as an error check after the initial connection. Here is the same script, with (minimal) error checking:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# perl modules
use CGI;
use DBI;
use strict;
use diagnostics;
# setup CGI handle
my $cgi = new CGI;
# start HTML
print $cgi->header;
my $dsn = 'DBI:mysql:mydb:localhost';
my $db_user_name = 'mydbusername';
my $db_password = 'mydbpassword';
my $dbh = DBI->connect($dsn, $db_user_name, $db_password) or die "Coul
+dn't connect to $dsn: $DBI::errstr";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare(qq{select user, topic, topictest from pagedata
+}) or die "Couldn't prepare select: ", $dbh->errstr;
$sth->execute() or die "Couldn't execute query: ", $dbh->errstr;
while (my ($username, $topic, $topictext) = $sth->fetchrow_array()) {
print "$username, $topic, $topictext";
}
$sth->finish();
$dbh->disconnect();
[download]

thor