Re: A brief survey of the DBI usability layer modules on the CPAN

[renodino]

I’m going crosseyed at all the (select|fetch)(all|row|col)_(array|hash)(ref)? methods in my code ... I have been fighting with an increasingly uncomfortable feeling of programming by coincidence because I can never tell ... what data structure ... my code will return. It’s killing my productivity because I’ve lost my confidence ...

If you're willing to mingle SQL with your perl, and don't mind source filters, perhaps SQL::Preproc would relieve your crosseyed productivity issues ? In most instances, you just write the SQL, inserting whatever Perl variable(s) you need to read from/write to as placeholders. No more "picking the right API call".

[Aristotle]

Oh dear, source filters. Well, maybe in Perl6, but for now I’m not putting any of those in my production code, sorry. :-)

Besides that non-specific objection, after a brief perusal of the docs, I have the same complaint as with DBIx::ContextualFetch: the choice of data structures is limited. I really do sometimes want a flattened list with the data from all rows.

[jZed]

As I understand it, SQL::PreProc makes quite controlled use of source filters - it specifies what it will and won't parse and mostly (or completely?) doesn't attempt to parse perl so it avoids the dangerous bits of source filters.