Well, from a design perspective, you could either let the main code "own" the database handle, as you've done, or let the test package "own" the database handle as a package variable that gets lazily initialized:

package main;
Test::Things::test1();
Test::Things::test2();
..
package Test::Things;
use vars qw($dbh);
sub test1 {
  $dbh ||= Database::Manager::get_dbh();
   ..
}
sub test2 {
  $dbh ||= Database::Manager::get_dbh();
  ..
}
..
package Database::Manager;
sub get_dbh {
  return DBI->connect($dsn, $user, $password, ...);
}
[download]

Something like that.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker