in reply to Binding a date in a call to an Oracle function

As other's have mentioned, chances are you need to use TO_DATE to convert the string date into an object that Oracle understands. I think it will look something like this:
$sth = $dbh->prepare(qq{ BEGIN create_person( ?, ?, ?, ?, TO_DATE(?, 'MM/DD/YYYY HH:SS'), ?, ?, + ?, ?, ? ); END; });
Notice the TO_DATE - has a placeholder(?) in it that will still be bound to bind_param 5. And you'll have to change the date format to match the format of the date in $date. But I think(?) that's the general idea.

It's been quite a while since I've worked with Oracle so take this with a grain of salt :-)

HTH.