You are confusing shell commands with SQL. An SQL client needs to establish a connection with the db to execute the SQL instructions.

What version of perl are you talking about? DBI is conservatively written and so is not particularly fussy about perl version. If you mean perl4, that doesn't support modules at all. Look around for a binary called perl5, if that is the case.

You should insist on obtaining DBI and its DBD::mysql driver. You can install those in a private directory, but presumably you are doing this for others to use, and so a system installation will be needed.

If your work really has so little support that you can't obtain that, you can kluge up something with system calls to the 'mysql' client, perhaps in batch mode. That is a highly distasteful option.

Update: The current DBI (v1.33) requires perl 5.005_03. Checking what earlier versions are available - It appears that version 1.20 and previous work with 5.004; all say they prefer 5.004_04 or later.

After Compline,
Zaxo