I believe that MS advise that you now use ADO to access data. They say it is the most efficient way to do it. You'll need MDAC installed, though (Assuming a Win32 platform):

#!C:/ActivePerl/bin/perl.exe -w
use strict;
use Win32::OLE;
my ($ADO_Connection, $ADO_Recordset, $SQL_statement);

my $conn_string="your DSN (see MSDN for syntax)";

$ADO_Connection = Win32::OLE->new("ADODB.Connection") or
        die("Couldn't create Connection object.\n");
$ADO_Recordset = Win32::OLE->new("ADODB.Recordset") or
        die("Couldn't create RecordSet object.\n");

$ADO_Connection->Open $conn_string;
$ADO_RecordSet-{'ActiveConnection'} = $ADO_Connection
$ADO_Recordset->{'Cursortype'} = 2 'adOpenKeySet
$ADO_Recordset->{'LockType'} = 3   'adLockPessimistic
$ADO_Recordset->Open $SQL_statement;
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