Without knowing anything more about your installation (which might in fact be broken), my best guess is that your column method on $data is not binary-clean.

You can test to see if freeze and thaw are working with a small one-liner:

$ perl -MStorable=freeze,thaw \
  -lwe 'print ${ thaw freeze \"hi mom" }'
hi mom
[download]

You can also test your column method more specifically, something like this:

use bytes;
my $orig = join '', map chr($_), 0 .. 255;
$data->column( 'data', $orig );
my $new = $data->column( 'data' );
if ( $orig ne $new )
{
    die "method 'column' is not binary clean!";
}
[download]

Thanks for your response. I tried using your test scripts in seperate files (the shebang line along with your code) and this is what came up:

server# perl perl.cgi
Backslash found where operator expected at perl.cgi line 3, near "thaw
+ \"
        (Do you need to predeclare thaw?)
String found where operator expected at perl.cgi line 4, near "lwe 'pr
+int ${ thaw freeze \"hi mom" }'"
        (Do you need to predeclare lwe?)
Semicolon seems to be missing at perl.cgi line 4.
Can't modify subtraction (-) in scalar assignment at perl.cgi line 3, 
+near "freeze,"
syntax error at perl.cgi line 3, near "thaw \"
Execution of perl.cgi aborted due to compilation errors.
[download]

server# perl perl.pl
Can't call method "column" on an undefined value at perl.pl line 5.
[download]

Do you have any idea why it isn't working? John

Note that my first example was intended to be run from a (unix-like) command prompt. A stand-alone perl script that does the same test would be something like this:

  #!/usr/bin/perl

  use strict;
  use warnings;

  use Storable qw( freeze thaw );

  print ${ thaw freeze \"hi mom\n" };

  exit 0;
[download]

If this runs without errors, then it again looks like your column method is suspect...