Yes in this case. But I often use it the DBI plugin like

[% USE DBI('dbi:mysql:logs','','') %] 
[% SET dbh = dbi.prepare(query) %] 
[% FOREACH user = user_list %] 
[% FOREACH item = dbh.execute(user) %] 
[% item.user %] 
[% END %]
[% END %]
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code:

$template->process(\$tt, {query => $query, user_list => [foo, bar]) or
+ die $template->error();
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That's quite handy. Also when you put all the database stuff inside the templates, you can easily switch between databases, without touching the perl code.