I'm not exactly sure what you're asking about, perhaps you could give an example. If what you want is just the values without the keys, that would be an AoA and is obtainable from the database with selectall_arrayref(). If you want each row keyed to a given column, that is an HoH, obtainable with selectall_hashref(). If you want an array of hashrefs for each row, that is an AoH and obtainable with selectall_arrayref(...Slice=>{}). If you want to be able to refer to the results of a database fetch by name without populating a hash, you can predefine a set of variables and populate them with bind_cols. But perhaps you're asking about something else?