For showing up bottleneck in your programm try to use a Benchmark::Timer:

    use Benchmark::Timer;
    $t = Benchmark::Timer->new(skip => 1);
    
    foreach my $field (sort @$field_order) {
        $t->start('tag');
        print "\t<TR>\n";
        print "\t\t<TH ALIGN=RIGHT>$field :</TH>\n";
        for my $i (0 .. $num_recs) {
            print "\t\t<TD ALIGN=LEFT>$records->[$i]->{$field}</TD>\n"
+;

        }

        print "\t</TR>\n";
        $t->stop;
    }   

    $t->report;
[download]

and Devel::Profiler:

$ perl -MDevel::Profiler your_script.pl
[download]

tnan see results

$ dprofpp
[download]

If you run your script under mod_perl you can use Devel::Profiler::Apache:

# in httpd.conf
 PerlModule Devel::Profiler::Apache;

 # or in startup.pl
 use Devel::Profiler::Apache;
[download]

Because it's very difficult to find out problem just to see a code,
but using of profiler and benchmark help you very well.
Good luck!

      
--------------------------------
SV* sv_bless(SV* sv, HV* stash);