I also use a method like the one that George Shearston
suggested above, though mine is designed as a package module
that is a bit more general-purpose -- you can find it
here.
My motivation was the same as yours. The DBI calls are
many and varied and sometimes bulky, and the DBI manual is awfully long reading,
so I just wanted my own "wrapper" module that would have
a handful of always-useful, always compact methods, whose
names and args are easy to remember. I seldom/never need
more than what the wrapper provides, and hardly ever need
to look back at the DBI man page anymore...