Try this:

1. Remove 5.6.1
2. Install 5.8.0
3. at a DOS prompt type: ppm install ftp://ftp.esoftmatic.com/outgoing/DBI/DBD-Oracle.ppd

It took a little variation on this theme, but I finally have attempted this approach. I discovered that my company requires ftp to go through a proxy and this was preventing ppm from reaching ftp.esoftmatic.com since that repository uses ftp rather than http, used by most repositories. I ended up manually ftp-ing to a local directory and declaring that as a local repository. ppm took it from there.

With DBD-Oracle and DBI-Oracle loaded, I try my test program:

#!

use strict;
use warnings;

use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:Oracle:adhoc',
                       'foo',
                       'bar',
                       { RaiseError => 1, AutoCommit =>0} 
                      ) || die "Database connection not made: $DBI::er
+rstr";
$dbh->disconnect;
[download]

And get an error dialog box from the connect with:

perl.exe - Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point Perl_Glockhook_ptr could not be located in the dynamic link library perl58.dll.

I am quite unsure where to go next with this?

Thank you monks for your help.

If you cannot get DBD-Oracle to work, you could also use DBD-ODBC. Does that meet your needs?

    esoft  => {
        location  => 'ftp://ftp.esoftmatic.com/outgoing/DBI',
        Type      => 'Webpage',
        Active    => 1,
        Notes     => 'DBI, DBD-Oracle, DBD-ODBC for 5.8',
        PerlV     => [ 5.8 ],
        PerlO     => ['MSWin32'],
    },
[download]

While I did, eventually, figure out how to load the precompiled DBD::Oracle as suggested, in spite of the company firewall and ftp proxy, that only resulted in runtime error dialogs.