in reply to Is Perl the right solution...

Big question: how comfortable are you with any of those platforms? If the data is in MS Access (and you think it will always be small enough to fit there), and you know VBA, that would probably be a very good choice. If you have zero experience with Perl, then it would not be a good choice. (My consulting rates are very reasonable, BTW ;-)

OTOH, if you think the app and data will grow large (multiple users, lots of data), Access has a very low ceiling, so you may want to consider SQL Server. Again, as for the application's UI, it depends very much on what you can deliver in time. If you are comfortable with browser-based apps already, then Perl is an excellent choice, in part because of the excellent tools that are available for it (templating systems in particular).

HTH