You've been given a couple of good options by some of the other monks. I personally prefer the explicit die call, myself.

You didn't say this explicitly, but if you'd like to really "trap" those error messages so they don't get spit out to the screen when your script runs, use the PrintError attribute with your connect statement. Eg:

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:DB", "user", "pwd", {PrintError => 
+0}) || die("Unable to connect to DB. Error was: $DBI->errstr\n");
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~CubicSpline
"No one tosses a Dwarf!"