The time is only lost if you don't learn anything from it. One thing to learn is that there are fewer "simple, harmless" operations than you might want to believe.

Seriously, one of the big "problems" with DBI is that it abstracts away a lot of messy behavior in the underlying database APIs. That problem is also a major feature, but it tempts people into thinking that they don't have to understand what's going on under the covers. That's a recipe for trouble.

If you're going to be doing any serious database work through DBI, you must understand the underlying vendor API. It also helps to have a firm grip on how DBI is abstracting that API. Without this, you risk getting surprised by things like errors that you think should be caught at prepare() time not being caught until execute() (because the underlying database doesn't support prepared queries, but DBI is simulating them for the sake of generality).

Thinking of this as a reactive "where do I go for help once I've realized I'm off in the weeds" problem is tempting. The trick is to do the up-front work so that you know where the weeds are before you find yourself in them.