Many perl modules' routines die when something goes wrong.

DBI shouldn't unless you set RaiseError => 1 when you did your database handle connect.

The standard technique for dealing with such routines is:

eval {
  potentially_fatal_function_call();
}
if ($@) {
  print "Fatal Error: $@";
  # ... whatever other appropriate error recovery
}
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Wrapping the potentially fatal function call in an eval block means that if it dies, your program won't stop; it'll just set $@ and you can check it.

I recommend leaving RaiseError => 1 and trapping the errors yourself.

There's a current thread on formatting this idiom.