Yes, `Stat`, `Project` and `Version` are being used as column names in the SQL query. No, the back-ticks do not have special meaning for Perl in this case, because the query text (with the back-ticks) is enclosed in double-quotes.

Back-ticks in an SQL statement are sometimes needed around a column name if that name also happens to be a reserved keyword in SQL.

I just learned this myself recently, when I tried to inspect a table that a co-worker had created, with a column called "group" -- which is a natural enough name for a column, but you can't do a query like "select group from my_table" unless you put back-ticks around that column name, because "group" is a reserved word (as in "group by").