jonadab has commented ably on a solution to your problem. I have some other suggestions.

Consult Writeup Formatting Tips. In it, you will learn to encase your code in a <code> block. Note that where you meant to write

$_[1]
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your entry presents
$_1
Mouse over the '1' and Note how the itis hyperlinked to perlmonks node 1. The square brackets link to articles unless they are enclosed in <code>

use strict. That would have told you that your $data variable was never used.

You are just obfusciating your code by defining

my $parm1 = $_[0]; #sql statement
my $parm2 = $_[1]; #server
my $parm3 = $_[2]; #username
my $parm4 = $_[3]; #password
my $parm5 = $_[4]; #dbname
  # etc
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Either just use the @_ variables directly, or give them meaningful variable names:

my($sql_statement, $server, $username, $password, $dbname) = @_;
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Putting a variable in doublequotes by itself (as you're doing with parm3 and parm4) is pernicious.

my $dbh=DBI->connect("dbi:Sybase:$parm2","$parm3", "$parm4" ) or die D
+BI::errstr;
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