dbi ODBC problem executing prepared statement taking datetime type

Please note that this has been posted to both comp.lang.perl and comp.databases.informix as I have had useful responses from both groups in the past re the DBI interface I have a problem with a call to execute an Informix prepared statment which takes 2 datetime values failing. The following code produces the expected results (i.e the execute succeeds) ##------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; use DBI; my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:ODBC:ol_histinf', '', '', , {RaiseError=>1}) || die $DBI::errstr . "\\n"; my $clipsqlstring = "SELECT sum(clipgetcount(series, '2003-12-06 00:00:00.00000', '2003-12-07 00:00:00.00000')) FROM spreadsticks;"; my $selsth = $dbh->prepare($clipsqlstring); $selsth->execute() or die 'Failed to execute SQL'; while(my @row = $selsth->fetchrow) { print Dumper \\@row; } exit(0); ##------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This produces the following results C:\\develop\\NiallPerlScripts>clpm15.pl $VAR1 = [ '32' ]; This is not what I want since the start and end date are hard coded However when I try to prepare the statement so that I can use variables for the start and end dates as follows ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- my $clipsqlstring = "SELECT sum(clipgetcount(series, ?, ?)) FROM spreadsticks;"; my $selsth = $dbh->prepare($clipsqlstring); $selsth->execute('2003-12-06 00:00:00.00000', '2003-12-06 00:00:00.00000') or die 'Failed to execute SQL'; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I get the following error C:\\develop\\NiallPerlScripts>clpm15.pl DBD::ODBC::st execute failed: [Informix][Informix ODBC Driver]Invalid applicatio n buffer type. (SQL-HY003)(DBD: _rebind_ph/SQLBindParameter err=-1) at C:\\develo p\\NiallPerlScripts\\clpm15.pl line 12. DBD::ODBC::st execute failed: [Informix][Informix ODBC Driver]Invalid applicatio n buffer type. (SQL-HY003)(DBD: _rebind_ph/SQLBindParameter err=-1) at C:\\develo p\\NiallPerlScripts\\clpm15.pl line 12. I though this might be a problem with casting datetime year to fraction(5) types but the following works as expected. my $clipsqlstring = "SELECT srcid FROM spreadsticks_series where tstamp = ?;"; my $selsth = $dbh->prepare($clipsqlstring); $selsth->execute('2003-04-16 07:06:45.00000') or die 'Failed to execute SQL'; while(my @row = $selsth->fetchrow) { print Dumper \\@row; } Can anyone help ? TIA