FYI - I ++'d the OP not because Reagen has a particularly elegant or insightful code snippet. But because it's a SoPW, not a code snippet, and Reagen is about to learn a bunch of stuff.

(Describing the table rather than using fetchrow_hashref?)

Of course, premature optimisation being the root of all evil and all, I do have to give at least one thumb up on actively seeking Laziness! If/when you find this to be slow, you'll have some lessons learned and be able to make some more leaps of logic to get to the next level. As has been pointed out, Class::DBI may be a good bet for you there.