sdyates, welcome back to Perl after six years.

As already pointed out by kejohm, the first thing to do is add strictures and warnings: this will highlight the 3 barewords you have in the code fragment shown and similar problems in the rest of your code.

The next step is to check the documentation for the DBD (database driver) for the database you're using:

• DBD::mysql - provides the format for the DBI->connect() call.
• DBD::ODBC - provides a template for DBI->connect() and links to DBD::ODBC::FAQ which has details (including notes on the DSN).

You'll find similar modules and documentation for other databases in the DBD:: space (should you need them).