"tell me your db layout", which is pretty annoying when you're still developing the app and your layout is this in a flux

I agree. DBIx::Class gets around this (Rose::DB might too, I'm not sure) with auto loading schema. It also has facilities to do bulk operations on resultsets, not just rows. The only real downside to ORMs which are at the level and quality of Rose and DBIC are that they are slower than straight DBI. Yes, they are only harder to follow/code at first but once you are in them they make reading the intention of DB code much easier than wading through SQL and will shave off nearly all the boring repetitive parts and can even make the really difficult parts pretty easy (like versioning, object inflation, and normalization of behavior across DB engines).