I'm building an application that connects to a remote MySQL server using DBD::mysql. The DSN used in the connection uses these options, among others: Normally, when using these options in a DSN, one gives a location to a path on the filesystem. I would rather store these options as scalars. However, this doesn't seem to work: 
#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use DBI;

my $host = 'localhost';
my $port = '3306';
my $username = 'username';
my $password = '';
my $db = 'database';

my $SSL_CA_FILE_STRING = <<"SSLCA";
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
<snip>
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
SSLCA

my $SSL_CLIENT_CERT_STRING = <<"SSL_CLIENT_CERT";
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
<snip>
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
SSL_CLIENT_CERT

my $SSL_CLIENT_KEY_STRING = <<"SSL_CLIENT_KEY";
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
<snip>
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
SSL_CLIENT_KEY

open my $ca_file_location, '<', \$SSL_CA_FILE_STRING || die $!;
open my $cert_file_location, '<', \$SSL_CLIENT_CERT_STRING || die $!;
open my $key_file_location, , '<', \$SSL_CLIENT_KEY_STRING || die $!;

my $dsn = "dbi:mysql:database=$db;host=$host;port=$port;"
. "mysql_ssl=1;mysql_ssl_ca_file=$ca_file_location;"
. "mysql_ssl_client_key=$key_file_location;"
. "mysql_ssl_client_cert=$cert_file_location";
my $dbh = DBI->connect( $dsn, $username, $password) 
. || die;

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The same DSN works if I provide filesystem paths. Any suggestions?

In reply to DBD::mysql w/SSL certs extracted from variables by wwinfrey

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