Just a few minor tips, from someone who picked up DBI and MySQL earlier this year and is starting to get comfortable with it...

• For any given database, you're going to have code in various places that needs to get a database handle, so write yourself a function that connects to the database and returns a handle. Throw this function in your own module (if you're comfortable with modules) or just in a db.pl that you can include (if you want to learn module-writing another time). This consolidates in one place not just the connect itself but also the various config info for the db in question (the MySQL username and so on). You'll save yourself a lot of copying and pasting.
• Some of your code will call that function directly and use the handle to do various special things in SQL directly (create tables, get a read-lock for backup purposes, do a special query, whatever), but *most* of the time you will be doing one of four things: retrieving a specific record, adding a record, updating a record, or getting a list of records that match a certain value in a certain field. So write functions that do these four things, and throw them in your module or include file. This will save you yet more copying and pasting. Write these functions in such a way that they don't have to be modified to work with different tables, different databases.
• Give every table in your database an id field that's NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT so that you can pass this id around and know that it uniquely identifies a specific record within the table. Your function for getting a specific record can take this id number and the table name and return the record as a hashref (if you are reasonably comfortable with references) or just as a hash (if you want to deal with learning about references later). The function that creates a new record should assign NULL to this field so that it will be assigned automatically. DBD::mysql provides a way for you to get the id number that was assigned (see the documentation on search.cpan.org), so your function can return that number if desired. Call this id field by the same name ("id" will do nicely) for every table, and save your memory for other stuff.
• Your tables will change. You will add fields to them. I learned this the hard way. You do NOT want to change all your code every time you do that. (Trust me on this.) So, don't hardcode lists of fields, like I did at first. That way lies frustration. Instead, pass your records around as hashrefs (or as hashes, if you aren't comfortable with references just yet), and that way the code that's getting or setting one field doesn't have to concern itself with what other fields there are.

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