There is a great protocol called BEEP (it's an RFC), which would do a lot of what you want. Unfortunately it is a C lib and hasn't been wrapped for perl yet, although I've been thinking of doing it myself.

I wrote an IPC module that works through network sockets and could easily be adapted for full network use. It transfers data stuctures using Storable, and they appear at the receiver without any work. It's on my perlmonk page, or message me for more details.

In any case, you will be using Storable, since it is an amazingly good module that serialises perl data structures.

I usually advise against chucking everything into a database. There are lots of great reasons for using a database, but it should be a considered decision, rather than the first thing you reach for. They have some great features like automatically working with multiple clients while insuring data integrity, but they are also slow compared to a solution that takes into account how different nodes are going to use the data.

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Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.