>Is there a way to see if there is at least one record returned w/o making

seperate SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ...

>And this via Perl DBI ...

Well, I don't know anything about Perl, but in general I would do a

SELECT 1 FROM RDB$DATABASE WHERE EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM ...)

If this returns one row, there should be at least one row present, if it
doesn't there is no row fitting your criteria.

HTH,
Set