Hi,

Read the DBI down because for this kind of selects you can use methods of the DBI to take the data back to the data type you want...

For example:

         $ary_ref  = $dbh->selectall_arrayref($statement);
         $hash_ref = $dbh->selectall_hashref($statement, $key_field);

         $ary_ref  = $dbh->selectcol_arrayref($statement);
         $ary_ref  = $dbh->selectcol_arrayref($statement, \%attr);

         @row_ary  = $dbh->selectrow_array($statement);
         $ary_ref  = $dbh->selectrow_arrayref($statement);
         $hash_ref = $dbh->selectrow_hashref($statement);
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So I don't think that your approach was worst in time, and the connection stuff is not much work to code it... I wouldn't use something like you post...

You can also use some nifty things like Class::DBI or some more simple but also very confortable like DBIx::Abstract

Normally you use config files where you set all the database connection data so that you only need the line where you connect/create the DBI object... and the keep on rollin'

Regards,