Do you have docs to back it up? Here's a snippet from Programming the Perl DBI that seems germane:

  #!/usr/bin/perl -w
  #
  # ch04/error/ex2: Small example using automatic error handling with 
  #           RaiseError, i.e., the program will abort upon detection
  #           of any errors.
  
  use DBI;            # Load the DBI module
  
  my ($dbh, $sth, @row);
  
  ### Perform the connection using the Oracle driver
  $dbh = DBI->connect( "dbi:Oracle:archaeo", "username", "password" , 
  {

      PrintError => 0,   ### Don't report errors via warn(  )
      RaiseError => 1    ### Do report errors via die(  )
  } );
  ### Prepare a SQL statement for execution
  $sth = $dbh->prepare( "SELECT * FROM megaliths" );
  
  ### Execute the statement in the database
  $sth->execute(  );
  
  ### Retrieve the returned rows of data
  while ( @row = $sth->fetchrow_array(  ) ) {
      print "Row: @row\n";
  }
  
  ### Disconnect from the database
  $dbh->disconnect(  );
  
  exit;
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Seems odd that they'd leave the error checking off of the connect when they do it in the section called "manual error checking". I'd honestly like to know if my programming style is wrong. I read once that RaiseError applied to the connect and have been leaving the 'or die "Couldn't connect..."' off ever since.