You raise a number of issues in your post, so I'll try to reply to a few of them here.

• A BLOB column type is for binary code -- I think BLOB stands for Binary Large OBject. To store a big chunk of text (like the MEMO field you mentioned), just use a text field. It's pretty roomy.

• Now, I got TOTALLY confused when I read this message and acutally got a rep of -2 when I replied questioning about it.

  You are probably being penalized by some monks by posting a chunk of code without showing that you've exhausted all of your available resources.

• Am I using placeholders correctly?

  Check the documentation for DBI .. placeholders are explained well there.

• Here's a tip: when you get stuck in the future, try the simplest possible example, and get that to fail. Post that simple example and ask for an explanation .. assuming (of course) that you've already combed the available man pages and did a bit of scratching through the database here on Perl Monks.

  You will get negative votes if you post without having done any research on your questions. It's important to learn how to learn. We'll help out when the path gets hard to find, but placeholders are not some arcane aspect of database programming, they're actually just good, basic, common sense.

Good luck!