I've done pretty much exactly what you've asked for (ie persistance with a DB) here.

More specifically, the code is an MP3 server that goes and gets a playlist from a DB (all a playlist is is a bunch of fully qualified mp3's, one per line in a text file).

My playlists are generated by getting a list of mp3's storing them in an array, freezing (using Storable) the array, unpacking it to hex to remove any naughty characters, then storing in a RDMBS using DBI.  BINDVAR=> unpack("H*",freeze(\@{$params{PLAYLIST}}))

My server then does the reverse. It goes and gets the playlist, packs it pack up, thaws it, and the result is the same array I put in there when the playlist was generated.

sub {
..
..
    my @ary = $sth->fetchrow_array;
..
..
    my $retval =  thaw(pack("H*", @ary) );
    return @{$retval}
}
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I'm currently working on a module that will do specifically what you are after (persistant storage in a db) to hone my OOP skills, so if you have any suggestions, /msg me, I'm open to ideas.