If you can you should stick to the ODBC driver under the DBI as much as possible. Otherwise I would recommend that you use the Win32::OLE module and create recordsets to the database.

The OLE method should only be a fall back position (though it can't always be helped) as your function calls are no longer DBI based. Hence this affects your portability.

Two examples of OLE code can be found in the following:

• Retrieving the last insert ID with Access
• Cannot insert into MS Access Memo field with DBI

Or heres snippet from some recent code I have been using. This code selects information from a Memo field.

use constant    DATA    =>    'driver=Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb);
+dbq=data.mdb';

my $db_connection = new Win32::OLE('ADODB.Connection');
    my $rs = new Win32::OLE("ADODB.Recordset");

    # Connect to the database and tie the recordset object to 
    # the database.
    $db_connection->Open(DATA);


    # Set the connection doohickey
    # $rs->CursorLocation(adUseClient);

    my $sql = "select c.info from MYTABLE as c;";
    
    $rs->Open($sql, $db_connection, adOpenKeySet);
    
    if($rs->BOF())
    {
        return;
    }

    my $data = $rs->getrows();
    
    return unless defined($data->[0][0]);
    return $data->[0][0];
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Ok thats with access but it should be the same for MSSQL