Just a CGI/DBI thought - doing as you have here by hardcoding the database $serverName, $serverDB, $serverUser, and $serverPass right in your CGI script is dangerous. It's fine for testing or just getting your feet wet with a test CGI application that connects to a database, but one way to make it safer is to *NOT* hardcode the database server and user login info actually in the CGI script - instead, put those variables in their own module(Ex: MY_DB.pm) and put the module *outside* the webserver's document root. By doing that, you prevent someone getting access to that database info if they compromise your webserver.

In your CGI script, put a 'use lib' in there where the value is the directory where MY_DB.pm is located. For example, if you put MY_DB.pm in /path/to/safe_dir/MY_DB.pm, then do this in your CGI script:

   use lib '/path/to/safe_dir';
   use MY_DB;
   our $serverName = $MY_DB::serverName;
   our $serverDB   = $MY_DB::serverDB;
   our $db = "DBI:mysql:$serverDB:$serverName";
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Creating modules is pretty easy, and there's good documentation on how - just do

   perldoc perl
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and look for 'perlmod' - there are several perldoc's describing modules, but I think the one you are interested in is 'perlmodlib' since that one is for how to write and use modules. So, to read the perlmodlib perldoc, just do

   perldoc perlmodlib
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at a command prompt.

HTH.