So you are not using any kind of ping at all now? And this works? If you just want to turn off ping completely, I think Apache::DBI has an option for this. But was not your problem that the connection broke and you wanted automatic reconnects? Your code does not seem to do that.

sub DESTROY {
    my $self=shift;
    if ($dbhobject) {
        $dbhobject = undef;
    }    
}
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I doubt that this DESTROY method is called ever. Your $dbhobject is not a blessed reference (just a plain hash ref containing the DBI handle), so this is not really OOP and $classname, $self and so on are a little confusing.

Update: Okay, maybe I misunderstood. This is the old code you were using (with Apache::DBI)? And it did not reconnect? If so, you were not using Apache::DBI correctly. You have to use "connect" to get a connection, and Apache::DBI will either make a really new connection or just return an alreay open connection. That is transparent to you. What you cannot do is cache the connection Apache::DBI give you in your own singleton object. You have to "connect" every time you want a connection: So instead of

sub new {
    my $classname = shift;
    my $self={};
    
    if ($dbhobject) {
        $self=$dbhobject
    } else {
        $self = bless {};
                my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:blah) or
                  die DBI::errstr;

        $self->{"dbh"} = $dbh;
    }
    $self;
}

sub DBHOBJ {
    return $dbhobject->{"dbh"};
}
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use

use Apache::DBI;
sub DBHOBJ {
    DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:blah) or
                  die DBI::errstr;
}
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