uh oh. i guess you missed the line Larry's "programming Perl" that complained about the lousy deprecated variables that are valid in some dbs and in others meaningless while optimizations in dbengines are forgotten (such as getting rid of that corny "read all in" memory from MySQL). I use DBI myself, but I am aware of its shortcomings and am aware that bigger and better things do come along. until then, i use DBI, too! Believe me, I am not alone on this opinion as you so rudely put it.