I haven't tried using Perl to connect to databases yet, so I'm not sure I could provide help with the DBI aspect. However, here's a work around that could get you going in the mean time.

• Save your SQL statement in a text file (for example, query.sql)
• Use sqlcmd (or osql for older SQL Server versions) to run the SQL statement and put the output in a file. (For example, sqlcmd -U user -P pwd -d database -i query.sql -o query.out)
• Use the output file as the source file for your Perl script

Kind of convoluted, but it should get you there. If you really wanted to, you could get Perl to create the '.sql' file and then use something like a piped open to run the sqlcmd command and read in its output.

By the way, you'll need the SQL client tools installed. Of course if you have the management studio installed, I would imagine that you have the client tools installed too.