Apache CGI and dbi

[dk henderson]

I narrowed a problem down to dbi not working with my apache 1.3.20 install on cygwin.
I can connect to a remote mysql server with dbi/dbd-mysql, from a perl script at a 
shell prompt
but not from the localhost apache server.
Is there an environment variable that I am lacking? The CGI script has
 $dbh = DBI->connect("$data_source", "$username", "$password", { RaiseError => 1, 
PrintError => 1, AutoCommit => 1 });

where are variables just as in the shell perl script.

thanks for any replies,
dale