Yes i've read all of the DBI page but i'm a perl beginner and don't really know how to use the eval structure. I've read about setting RaiseError = 1/0. I want to use the automatic error handling from setting raise error = 1. However i don't know how to 'catch' the die in an eval loop so I can customise the error message for the end user . Will the error message raised by the dbi simply be in the $@ variable so I can work with that?