hi i am using the following code to connect to MySQL database but i am getting this error Software error: Global symbol "$db" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 16. Global symbol "$host" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 17. Global symbol "$user" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 18. Global symbol "$password" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 19. Global symbol "$db" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 21. Global symbol "$host" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 21. Global symbol "$user" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 22. Global symbol "$password" requires explicit package name at C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi line 23. Execution of C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/cgi-bin/data.cgi aborted due to compilation errors. code that is been used Code: #!C:\perl\bin\perl.exe use DBI; use CGI qw(:standard); use warnings; use CGI::Carp qw(warningsToBrowser fatalsToBrowser); use strict; print header; print start_html("Results Page"); $db="Disease"; $host="localhost"; $user="root"; $password="mysql1234"; #connect to MySQL database my $dbh = DBI->connect ("DBI:mysql:database=$db:host=$host", $user, $password) or die "Can't connect to database: $DBI::errstr\n"; my $query = new CGI; my %formdata = $query->Vars; my $searchkey = $formdata{'star'}; my $sth = $dbh->prepare("select * from target where Target_type == $searchkey "); $sth ->execute(); print '<table border="1">'; print '<tr><th>Key 1</th><th>key2</th><th>Target Name</th><th>Target Type</th><th>PDB ID</th><th>Modeled Structure</th><th>Uniprot link</th><th>Disease Name</th><th>KEGG link</th></th>'; while (my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array) { print "<tr><td>$row[0]</td><td>$row[1]</td><td>$row[2]</td><td>$row[3]</td><td>$row[4]</td><td>$row[5]</td><td>$row[6]</td><td>$row[7]</td><td>$ro w[8]</td></tr>\n"; } print'</table>'; print end_html; and the HTML script HTML: <html> <head><Title> Query form </title></head> <body> <p> Welcome to database search <p> <hr> <a href ="http://localhost/cgi-bin/test2.pl ">click here </a> to view Target database . <p> <hr> <p> Searching for a Disease in Target database <form action="http://localhost/cgi-bin/data.cgi" method="post" > <!-- <p>Enter search Key : <input type="text" name="skey" /></p> --> <p>Enter Target type : <input type="text" name="star" /></p> <p><input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit Form" /></p> </form> </body> </html> please help me out with this