Could you give us some code to look at? Persistence is a tricky topic and depends a lot on your particular needs - knowing the details will make for better advice. Also, is your decision not to use existing CPAN modules based on a desire to go with what you already have, or is there a feature that you haven't been able to find?

As a pure guess, I'd say you might want to tie a variable ( so storage is transparent ), or use a persistence class that creates and keeps its own database handle. If you show us your code, we can give more useful suggestions.

Good luck!