Database authentication

[JDWilliams]

This is probably a very easy question to answer, but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the best way to proceed. I'm setting up a cell phone and pager database for our employees. Essentially what they'll do is connect to a web page that will allow them to run a query by location through a cgi script. I can hard code the username and password for connecting to the database into the cgi code but obviously don't want to do this. I also don't want to prompt the user to enter in a username or password either. Do I have a third option that will hide the username and password for the database so that if someone decides to take a look at my cgi script they won't see it? I'm using DBI to connect to a mySQL database.

I haven't done a lot of programming with CGI.pm so my knowledge is a bit sketchy in areas. If someone could point me in the right direction I'd appreciate it.