problems with 'require'

Hey,
I've been using simple CGI scripts to make some things on my website 
require less human touch and some of them require mysql database 
connection. I've started with only one such scripts but now there are 
more so I've decided to move the connection data (table name, database 
name, username, password) to a separate .pm file which I could include 
in the other .cgi scripts. However, I don't seem to be able to use the 
functions and/or variables in this .pm module and I have no idea what is 
wrong. Let me give you a simple example of what works and what doesn't 
and I would really appreciate any help.

<file mydbtest.pm>
	package dbredwings;

	my $platform = "mysql";
	my $database = "dbplayers";
	my $host = "localhost";
	my $tablename = "players";
	my $user = "player";
	my $pw = "pass";

	sub printout {
		print shift;
	}

	sub get_platform {
		print $platform;
	}
	1;
</file mydbtest.pm>

<file properscript.cgi>
	require 'mydbtest.pm';
	print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
	&mydbtest::printout('hey hey'); # (1)
	&mydbtest::get_platform; # (2)
	print $mydbtest::platform; # (3)
</file properscript.cgi>

(1) works without any problems. I get the proper output in my browser 
window.
(2) doesn't work at all. I get an error as follows:
Undefined subroutine &mydbtest::get_platform called at 
E:/webdev/perl/properscript.cgi line 42.
(3) prints an empty string

Also, I get an error message saying that the .pm file can't be found 
when I place it in the same directory as the .cgi files. I have to move 
it to a directory in the @INC array when I run it through the server. 
However, when I run it locally, from the command line, everything works 
just fine. This makes me think that there is something in the Apache 
config that I have to do in order for all this to work but I don't know 
what that is.

I'm running ActivePerl 5.10.1 with Apache2.2 with mod_perl.
Alias /perl "E:\webdev\perl"
   <Location /perl>
      SetHandler perl-script
      PerlResponseHandler ModPerl::Registry
      Options +ExecCGI
      PerlOptions +ParseHeaders
   </Location>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "E:/webdev/perl/cgi-bin/"

Cheers,
palo