Thanks, davido. This sent me down what seems to be a working path. I didn't go so far as to try DBIx::Connector yet, but you got me poking around and it seems just adding the InactiveDestroy => 1 attribute to my connection string along with my other changes has remedied the immediate issue.

This is something I would expect to be an issue for me during code development work, where I may be running a script repeatedly in a very short order of time for debugging purposes and testing different things, which is what I was doing and the repeated connection issues were slowly driving me insane as they slowed me down.

I do tend to agree that the failures are possibly a greater concern, but I know very little about databases; I do this stuff on the side to make my regular job more efficient. I have put in an issue ticket with my Oracle DBA team to contact me and look at the issue with me, but they can be a bit slow to get around to minor issue tickets that only impact 1 person... also, sometimes they can end up hurting more than helping if they decide they don't like what someone is doing to their database. I try to sympathize, and I'm happy to play by their rules as long as they help me... I just want easy access to the data I need to do certain job tasks of mine more efficiently.