DBI module - where to start?

(Tried this topic before, with no responses. I'll try again from a
different angle.)

The application I'm writing involves shoving mail in a database and
selectively pulling it back out. I'm mostly operating on headers. I've 
gone through a few different iterations, starting from doing all the 
mail parsing by hand, through using Mail::Internet and MIME::Tools, and
now I'm obviously using Mail::Box.

Right now, I'm pulling stuff from the database and manually constructing
Mail::Message objects through a method like this (very simplified):

        $db_get_messages = $dbh->prepare(
                "select headers from messages where ...");
    [...]
    my $headers;
        $db_get_messages->execute();
        $db_get_messages->bind_col(1, \$headers);
    while ($db_get_messages->fetch()) {
        my @headers = split /\n(?!\s+)/, $headers;
        my $h = Mail::Message::Head->new();
        foreach my $l (@headers) {
            next if ($l =~ /^(?:From\s.*)$/);
            $l =~  /^(\S+):\s(.*)/s ;
            if (defined($1) && defined($2)) {
                $h->add($1 => $2); 
            }
        }
        my $message = Mail::Box::Message->new(head => $h,);
        push @messages, $message;
    }

This is fine, but it did occur to me that life would be nicer if a Box
object that took a SQL statement existed; would be extremely convenient
for a number of things.

I'm working at coming up to speed on the modules, but as my last 
message indicated, I have a massive version switch to swallow, and 
am new to Mail::Box in general.

So, I'm wondering what the minimal set of methods required would be to 
define a Mail::Box::DBI class that allowed read access.

Any hints would be appreciated.

-j

-- 
Jamie Lawrence                                        jal@xxxxxxx