What Mr. Muskrat means is something like this:

use strict;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI::connect( ... ) or die "DBI::connect failed";

my $sql = <<ENDSQL;
SELECT ...
  FROM ...
WHERE ...
 ...
ENDSQL

my $sth = $dbh->prepare( $sql ) or die "DBI::prepare() failed";
$sth->execute( );

...
[download]

(and remember to add parameter variables or values in the execute() call, if your sql statement has any "?" placeholders).