<Location /mod_soap>
   SetHandler perl-script
   PerlHandler Apache::SOAP
   PerlSetVar dispatch_to "/usr/local/apache/lib/soap"
</Location> 

##</code><code>##

package Factory;

use strict;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect(
   qw(DBI:vendor:database:host user pass),
   { RaiseError => 1}
);

sub instantiate { 
   my ($self,$package,$id) = @_; 

   my $sth = $dbh->selectall_arrayref('
      select title,artist,year
      from songs
      where id = ?
   ',undef,$id)->[0];

   my $obj = eval { $package->new($id,@$sth) };
   return $@ ? undef : $obj;
}

package My::User;

use strict;

sub new {
   my ($class,$id,$title,$artist,$year) = @_;
   my $self = {
      id     => $id,
      title  => $title,
      artist => $artist,
      year   => $year,
   };
   return bless $self,$class;
}

# this will be discussed later ...
sub foo { 'foo' }

1; 

##</code><code>##

use strict;

use SOAP::Lite;
use Data::Dumper;

my $soap = SOAP::Lite
   ->uri("http://127.0.0.1/Factory")
   ->proxy("http://127.0.0.1/mod_soap");

my $object = $soap->instantiate('My::User','5')->result;

print Dumper $object;

##</code><code>##

$VAR1 = bless( {
                 'artist' => 'Van Halen',
                 'title' => 'You Really Got Me',
                 'id' => '5',
                 'year' => '1978'
               }, 'My::User' );

##</code><code>##

my $object = $soap->instantiate('My::User','5')->result;
print $object->foo();

# yields:  
Can't locate object method "foo" via package "My::User" at ./instantiate.pl line 23.