If you have the time, you might try investigating existing solutions to OO database access and/or persistence, e.g. Tangram, DBIx::Recordset, Alzabo.

I've never used any of these, but you can find information on these and other modules through Super Search or CPAN.

FYI, here's a post from the DBI list:

I just thought I'd let this list know that there's a comparison of persistence tools for Perl at http://poop.sourceforge.net. POOP stands for Perl Object-Oriented Persistence. There's also a mailing list for discussion of such things (poop-group@lists.sourceforge.net). The document as it stands compares a number of RDBMS-OO mappers as well as some OO-RDBMS mappers, including Class::DBI, Alzabo, and DBIx::RecordSet in the former category and Tangram and SPOPS in the latter.

And there's an article in this month's Linux World here: http://www2.linuxjournal.com/lj-issues/issue90/4887.html.