I am having trouble with some code Ive produced to connect to a database, read in a row of data and assign each column to a variable. Sample code: 
$dbi = DBI->connect('Blah', 'Blah', 'Blah', 'ODBC');
$dbistmt = $dbi->prepare(" SELECT * FROM MyTable" );   
$dbistmt->execute;
while(@publication_record = $dbistmt->fetchrow()){
  last if $publication_record[0]=~/^$PublicationId$/
}
$dbistmt->finish;
$dbi->disconnect;

$Pu_strID = $publication_record[0];
$Pu_PuStOp_strID = $publication_record[1];
$Pu_PuTy_strID = $publication_record[2];
$Pu_strName = $publication_record[3];
etc..

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The variables I am using ($Pu_strID, $Pu_PuStOp_strID, etc..) are taken from the column names themselves (Pu_strID, Pu_PuStOp_strID, etc..). This has been working well until recently. A coworker added a new feild betwen the 0 and 1st columns and now $publication_record[2] and $publication_record[3] are not what I was expecting. I would like to avoid this in the future. How can I say to sql/dbi/whatever to grab the data from the column named "Pu_strName" and assign it to the $Pu_strName variable, regardless of where the Pu_strName column is? (hope at least some of this makes any sense at all)

In reply to Database Problems by Anonymous Monk

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