Fetchrow hashref is pretty slow. Consider doing whatever structures you need yourself :) The DBI maintainer hasn't optimized fetchrow_hashref yet, which is one big reason why you shouldn't use it if you're concerned about speed. Also, if your site is mostly static (i.e. you only have a few dynamic pages) consider not using mod_perl. use something like fastcgi instead. mod_perl has a big memory/processor overhead because it launchers a new interpreter for every new httpd process. fastcgi takes a round robin approach where it has a pool of already compiled copies of your script where it connects a user to one of those copies in a never-ending circle...(is that confusing, I think so...:)