SOLVED I've managed to get what I need by saving the data from the query into an array: <code> Now the array ... @kwtop has 10 elements $NumKWBooks: 173 Programming 67 red 38.73% Mathematics 47 orange 27.17% Perl 24 yellow 13.87% Knots 22 green 12.72% Calculus 13 blue 7.51% </code> This is WITHOUT using an alias. Tried it with a hash (no alias) but still something wonky, maybe with the way I'm coding it. Either way I can now move forward with the SVG process. Thank you to all who burrowed into this. Very much appreciated.