I think you may be partially right on this issue. However, I have setup the ODBC DSN as a System DSN for Microsoft FoxPro. When I manually go into Excel and try to open the database through the ODBC DSN, I can open it fine. But when the Perl script begins, I get "Cannot Connect." When I copy the database to the same web server machine, I can also open it locally through the ODBC driver with no problem. I am running this on an Apache web server. Is there perhaps a default User name that the apache web server uses when attempting to connect over the network? thanks, bill