in reply to perl+oracle+windoze=trouble

This application has failed to start because Perl56.dll was not found. +Re-installing the application may fix this problem.
I'm running activestate perl 5.8.8 here.

No, you're not:

Can't load 'C:\oracle\product\10.1.0\Db_1\perl\5.6.1\lib\MSWin32-x86/a +uto/Data/Dumper/Dumper.dll

Try typing perl -v and see what it outputs. It seems that your Oracle installation came with its own Perl, a Perl 5.6, and you're now mixing up Perl versions. Clean up $ENV{PATH} and make sure you're running the version of Perl you want. For more information on PERL5LIB, see perlrun. You can set those variables from your shell session or in the batch file that calls your Perl program.