And that is, all DBI needs to know is the first two fields of the DSN. The first must match 'dbi' (+-case); the second must match a module "DBD::<2ndfield>" that is installed locally. What comes after that is none of its concern. It just gets passed through to the loaded DBD driver.

A half-way alternative would be to specify the driver separated from the DBD-specific stuff. Then this:

$dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Informix:$database", $user, $pass, %attr);
$dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:Unify:dbname[;options]" [, user [, auth [, at
+tr]]]);
$dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=$host;sid=$sid", $user, $passwd);
[download]

would become this:

$dbh = DBI->connect(Informix => $database,             $user, $pass, %
+attr);
$dbh = DBI->connect(Unify    => "dbname[;options]",    $user, $pass, %
+attr);
$dbh = DBI->connect(Oracle   => "host=$host;sid=$sid", $user, $pass, %
+attr);
...
[download]

Please note that this is not an API change request/suggestion ;).