I was just looking at that yesterday. There doesn't seem to be a way of doing the following without querying the database twice:

if no records match
   (content)
else
   foreach record
      (content)
   end
end
[download]

It seems like something people would commonly need.

I was thinking of making an alternate version of Template::Plugin::DBI::Iterator where the content of get_first has been moved into new and where get_first is a dummy. One could then do the following:

[% RAWPERL %]
   local $Template::Plugin::DBI::ITERATOR =
      'Template::Plugin::DBI::IteratorZ';
[% END %]

...

[% SET query = DBI.query( 'SELECT rows FROM table' ) %]
[% IF query.last %]
   content
[% ELSE %]
   [% FOREACH item = query %]
      content
   [% END %]
[% END %]

...

[%# Still works the old way %]
[% FOREACH item = DBI.query( 'SELECT rows FROM table' ) %]
   content
[% END %]
[download]

(Untested)

Is there a better way? Or any other way?

Update: Added "without querying the database twice" and the "still works the old way" bit.