Good advice, and a perceptive warning:

that does mean if you connect from multiple apps and you want to change some aspect of the driver connection you will have to change it in multiple places instead of in a single SYSTEM DSN.

I think I'll set up a module so my client scripts can say

use OurDatabase::Connection;
my $dbh = OurDatabase::Connection->new();
[download]

and the OurDatabase::Connection module can check whether it's running in development or in production and pick the right server name accordingly.

My boss may regret the apparent increase in complexity, but I'll try to point out that we'll be leaving behind our dependency on crucial data that we've been keeping hidden in the Windows registry until now.