I really like the idea of using data functions to map from perl to sql. Unfortunately it looks like using your examples would give me the worst of both worlds, as I would still end up with sql being strewn around in the middle of my code and I see no easy way to easily be "database agnostic" with those subs, other then just writing one set of subs for every single database I want to use.

Using these data functions you at least limit the SQL to a specific module (or set of modules), and this set of modules could quite easily be a hierarchy that takes database specificities into account.

Another possibility is to store the SQL in a separate file (text file, DB_File or something else) indexed by logical request. Load the file at startup and map perl subroutines to SQL statements.

There are always a bunch of ways to do these things... :-)

Michael