Slightly [OT]...

my @names = $db->query('SELECT name FROM people WHERE id > 5')->flat;

I thought that looked nice so I had a look at it. But when compared to the 'normal' DBI way it turns out there is really not much of an advantage. The line is a little shorter (++) but you get a dependency (--) and lose quite a bit of speed (--).

perl -MData::Dumper -MDBI -MDBIx::Simple -e '
  my $db1 = DBI->connect;        # (uses defaults to connect)
  my $db2 = DBIx::Simple->connect;
  use Benchmark qw( cmpthese ) ;
  my $COUNT = -20;
  print "-- COUNT [$COUNT]\n";
  cmpthese( $COUNT, {
    selectrow_arrayref => sub { my @arr = @{ $db1->selectrow_arrayref(
+ "select i from generate_series(1,10) as f(i) where i > 5" ) }; },
    dbix_query_flat    => sub { my @arr = $db2->query( "select i from 
+generate_series(1,10) as f(i) where i > 5")->flat; },
  });
'

-- COUNT [-20]
                     Rate    dbix_query_flat selectrow_arrayref
dbix_query_flat    5608/s                 --               -23%
selectrow_arrayref 7293/s                30%                 --
[download]

As always when I look closer at ORMy things (mainly because many people seem to be fond of ORMs), I don't think it's worth it.

Hi erix,

first of all ++ for your post. That are the choices you have to made.

Slightly OT...

Yes, i tried to see the OP from a different angle.

As always when I look closer at ORMy things...

I don't think it's too ORMy.