I wouldn't write code this way but the user's example had not used the CGI module and had already put out the http header. The original poster wanted to know how to find out what went wrong so I plugged an [unfortunately broken] example of how to find out into his code. I guess I could have gone on to give a couple of pointers on better ways to structure his web apps and rewritten his entire snippet for him but I thought he's already having problems with DBI, why confuse him with talk about CGI? Hopefully, he'll get there when he's ready for it.