What I especially like about SQL::Abstract is that the problem of variable numbers of placeholders is addressed, it's no fun to generate strings like (?,?,?,?) for IN statements.

Hmm, interesting. I'll have to take a closer look at that module. I had previously been building strings like this:

my $insertstring = '['.join('],[', @sqlcolumns).']';
my $valuestring  = join(',', map {'?'} @sqlcolumns);
my $query        = "INSERT INTO table ($insertstring) VALUES ($valuest
+ring)";
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Which is, as you say, tedious.