Alzabo also does outer joins pretty simply. At least, it's simple in terms of scaling up from the complexity of a non-outer join example. There's still that initial learning curve and all ;)

my $cursor =
    $schema->join
        ( select => [ $table1, $table2 ],
          join   =>
          [ [ left_outer_join => $table1 => $table2 ],
            [ $table2 => $table3 ],
          ],
          ...
        );
[download]

The current CVS version also adds support for specifying join conditions as in this SQL:

  SELECT ... FROM Foo
       OUTER JOIN Bar on Bar.foo_id = Foo.foo_id AND
                  Bar.size > 2
  WHERE ...
[download]

The Alzabo syntax for it is a bit ugly so far though.