Hey Guys, Thank you all for taking time to solve my issue. All of you have been really helpful. i tried connecting to the db using a diff driver and got the expected result. even though i am puzzled as to why DBI doesnt work. i am happy that Win32::ODBC works. here is the code.

use Win32::ODBC;

 $connection = new Win32::ODBC("SQL SERVER") or die "Could not open co
+nnection to DSN because of [$!]";

$SQL = "select * from pubs.dbo.authors where au_lname = 'green'";

$connection->Sql($SQL);

while($connection->fetchrow())
{
 @datarow = $connection->Data();
print "@datarow\n";

}
$connection->Close();
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