Just a CGI/DBI thought - doing as you have here by hardcoding the database $serverName, $serverDB, $serverUser, and $serverPass right in your CGI script is dangerous. It's fine for testing or just getting your feet wet with a test CGI application that connects to a database, but one way to make it safer is to *NOT* hardcode the database server and user login info actually in the CGI script - instead, put those variables in their own module(Ex: MY_DB.pm) and put the module *outside* the webserver's document root. By doing that, you prevent someone getting access to that database info if they compromise your webserver.

In your CGI script, put a 'use lib' in there where the value is the directory where MY_DB.pm is located. For example, if you put MY_DB.pm in /path/to/safe_dir/MY_DB.pm, then do this in your CGI script: 
   use lib '/path/to/safe_dir';
   use MY_DB;
   our $serverName = $MY_DB::serverName;
   our $serverDB   = $MY_DB::serverDB;
   our $db = "DBI:mysql:$serverDB:$serverName";

[download]
Creating modules is pretty easy, and there's good documentation on how - just do 
   perldoc perl

[download]
and look for 'perlmod' - there are several perldoc's describing modules, but I think the one you are interested in is 'perlmodlib' since that one is for how to write and use modules. So, to read the perlmodlib perldoc, just do 
   perldoc perlmodlib

[download]
at a command prompt.

HTH.

In reply to Re: "use strict;" woes by hmerrill
in thread "use strict;" woes by toonski

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.