Pity you didn't go to YAPC::NA 2006, as there were a few good talks about ajax with respect to perl integration. For example, these slides might contain enough of a tutorial for you, especially given that it gears toward doing it in perl. Here's another one, with a slightly different topic. And if you're interested in any of the other talks for which slides have been put online, they're right here.
HTH
--chargrill
s**lil*; $*=join'',sort split q**; s;.*;grr; &&s+(.(.)).+$2$1+; $; =
qq-$_-;s,.*,ahc,;$,.=chop for split q,,,reverse;print for($,,$;,$*,$/)