Class::DBI provides a mapping between a relational database and a class/object system. However unintuitive the API may seem, most of it is fairly obvious if you consider table =~ class, row =~ object, column =~ property, and the different ways of retrieving data via SQL. The more problematic parts are caused by the numerous mismatches between perl and SQL that are impossible to solve efficiently without explicit programmer input. Hence for example the explicit difference between search() and search_like().

I personally find the Class::DBI API one of the more straightforward implementations of an object-relational mapping I've used, plus it's reasonably efficient.

If you really think it is confusing, I suspect you might benefit from reading up on SQL or OO programming. Or try to make such a system yourself. I did, and I learned a lot. One of the things I learned, was that writing your own database abstraction layer is a lot harder than it looks. :-) I switched to Class::DBI for everything except code that really needs the performance of the "raw" DBI.