Thank you all for sharing your wisdom, I have gained knowledge :^)

I believe syphilis is correct in Win32::API does not deal well with short data types. So I took the suggestion and played around with InLine and now have another option for calling APIs:

    use warnings;
    use strict;

    print "InLineC.pl Started:\n\n  Now to Execute some C code:\n\n";
    print "    fnTest Returned: ".fnTest()."\n";
    print "\n  Back from the C Code\n\nInLineC.pl Finished.\n";


    use Inline C => <<'END_C';
    #include <sql.h>
    int fnTest() {
        SQLHENV env;
        SQLRETURN ret;
        ret = SQLAllocHandle(1, 0, &env);
        return ret; 
    }
    END_C
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