Yes. I have one thing to say, as a SQL Server DBA: Use more stored procedures and less client side querying. It doesn't matter what language you use for the client side (Perl, Java, Python, VB, whatever) if you use properly optimized stored procedures to put most of your work server side. Also doesn't matter what your database is (SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL), this rule still applies.
The problem isn't with Perl here, its probably with programmers who don't really understand how to use a database, that is, don't know a SARG-able expression from a correlated subquery.