I've used DBI and Rose::DB::Object and found that they are optimized for highly selective queries that limit the results to a RAM memory container. Rose::DB::Object::Manager abstraction will provide iterative method capabilities, but since it is build on top of DBI, it will not provide "data window" memory management.

Some DBI DBDs provide options for this sort of thing. For example, DBD::mysql provides a "mysql_use_result" attribute to prevent a total transfer of data to the client on execute(). (More info.)

(And incidentally, Rose::DB provides access to this attribute.)