Yes, this is a common issue with binary column data and DBI. I recently added support for explicit bind_param() calls to Rose::DB::Object in order to support Postgres's BYTEA column type. (Unfortunately, Rose::DB::Object does not currently support DB2.)

Calling bind_param() explicitly incurs a small performance hit, since it must be called on every value in a given query, even if it's only strictly needed on just one. Although the DBI docs say that calling execute() with arguments calls bind_param() on every value anyway, my testing has shown that there is a difference between allowing DBI to do it and doing it manually.

The compromise I came up with in Rose::DB::Object is to explicitly call bind_param() only if one or more columns in a particular table requires it. This eliminates the performance hit for the common case of tables without any binary columns.