How do I connect with Perl to SQL Server?

Everything following 'dbi:ODBC:' in your connection string is passed to the ODBC driver. For MSSQL, try this connection string:

DBI->connect("dbi:ODBC:Driver={SQL Server};Server=192.168.3.137;UID=$user;PWD=$password")

You can find some more alternatives on connectionstrings.com

I am on Ubuntu (20.04) and followed the instructions to install SLQ Server in a docker container: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/quickstart-install-connect-docker?view=sql-server-ver15&pivots=cs1-bash

I created the TestDB and the table Inventory as per the tutorial.

I installed the ODBC driver following https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/connect/odbc/linux-mac/installing-the-microsoft-odbc-driver-for-sql-server?view=sql-server-ver15

The driver library file was /opt/microsoft/msodbcsql17/lib64/libmsodbcsql-17.5.so.2.1

With that, the following script successfully connects to the DB and returns the content of the table:

 #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

use DBI;
my $user = 'SA';
my $password = '<YourNewStrong@Passw0rd>';

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:ODBC:Driver={/opt/microsoft/msodbcsql17/lib64/libmsodbcsql-17.5.so.2.1};Server=localhost;Database=TestDB;UID=$user;PWD=$password");

my $sth = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM Inventory");
$sth->execute();

while ( my @row = $sth->fetchrow_array ) {
      print "@row\n";
}