As to your note at the end, that you are considering preopening a DBI connection: don't do that. DBI isn't fork-safe in that manner

You are absolutely right in your statement about opening DBI connections at startup and leaving them open to be inherited by the child processes. That causes all kinds of problems.

But it is perfectly safe to open a DBI connection at startup, use it to do some configuration, and then closing it before the fork. I have a feeling that is what bsb was questioning.

- Cees