I'd agree that HTML::Template with fetchall_arrayref({}) is the easiest way to go.

However, it's quite possible to do it with DBI and a loop. The DBI bind_columns() method is the fastest fetching method and gives you nice variable names without even creating a hash. Here's an example:

my $sth=$dbh->prepare("SELECT country,region FROM geo");
$sth->execute;
my($country,$region);
$sth->bind_columns(\$country,\$region);
while ($sth->fetch) {
    print "<tr><td>$country</td><td>$region</td></tr>\n";
}
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