in reply to programmatic database querying

You didn't supply the SQL (understandable), but I've found that this type of error message means that some bind variables are expected, yet not provided.

for example:

my $sql = qq{SELECT * FROM mytable WHERE mytableid = ?}; my $sth = $dbh->prepare ($sql); $sth->execute ($mytableid_value);
If the value $mytableid_value is not present (missing), the error message you display would be produced.