Being a java head, take a look at Spring and its configuration format. It covers a lot of that object instanciation/configuration stuff, where you need access into the attributes of objects as well. There's an XML and .properties way of configuration now. There is a 3rd (or 4th) way that they are working on to pleaes the people, like me, who want a more natural configuration (tag) language using XML.

springframwork.org. Don't get too lost in all of the options it has. It's java heavy, but there is a lot of cool concepts that could be ported to perl.