my $dbh->do(...) Aha... You didn't open your database handle, did you? ;-)

You have to make sure there is a database connection before issuing SQL commands. If you do not call DBI->connect, your database handle will be undefined. In your case, you have created a new lexical with my $dbh in your second part of the code, which will be undefined unless you call the connect, or use the existing handle by dropping that my in front of $dbh->do(...) (assuming that you have dropped that first $dbh->disconnect of course). Here's an example on how to connect to the database using DBI and DBD.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use DBI;
use DBD::Sybase;

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Sybase:server=XXXX;database=XXXX", "USER",
+"PASSWD")
        or die "Failed to connect to the database!";

my $sth = $dbh->prepare( qq{ SQL statement } );
$sth->execute();

my @column_headings = @{$sth->{NAME}};

while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow())
{
    # Data elements $row[0] ... $row[-1]
    ...
}

$sth->finish;
$dbh->disconnect;
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