Tie::DBI is a memory pig and I wouldn't recomend it for Phoenix's problem. In fact, I'm not happy with this whole tie() idea to begin with for this case. In some previous threads on the same problem Phoenix had some other problems where ze was running out of memory. I'm tending to think ze should either use the straight DB APIs straight - without going through tie() or MLDBM shenanigans.

In fact... I was thinking of something like Pg (not DBD::Pg) combined with either asynchronous queries or cursors might be a good comprimise.