Is SQL2000 a Microsoft product?? If it is, then do you might be able to use ODBC. As the others have said, if you can use DBI, you should - DBI stands for Database Independent Interface - if you don't have it yet, search on google for "Perl DBI" and I'm sure you'll find it. Two parts to using DBI to access your database:

  1. DBI
  2. specific DBD module for your particular database, like
       DBD::mysql for the MySQL database
[download]

I know there's a DBD::ODBC module that you might be able to use - that's about the best I can do since I don't have experience using Perl or DBI on a Windows platform.

HTH.