At the very least, you should just iterate of your sql strings. Also would be a good idea to add or die
to your execute
methods:
my @sql = (
q{ALTER TABLE whatever....},
q{UPDATE whatever....},
q{ALTER TABLE whatever....},
q{DROP TABLE whatever....},
q{DROP TABLE whatever....},
);
for (@sql) {
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($_);
$sth->execute or die $dbh->errstr;
}