One possible approach is don't use DBI at all. Well, don't use it directly but use abstractions layers which can hide ugly SQL queries. Personally since I'm big OO fan I just want to use persistent objects and have all SQL queries hidden from me (at some extend). If you find such approach interesting check very nice overview of Perl Object-Oriented Persistence modules.

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Ilya Martynov (http://martynov.org/)