You could possibly use the DBI module / system for a level of abstraction (and for even more abstraction, subclass Class::DBI. This may be helpful to you because of the myriad DBD drivers designed to work with DBI, which include:

• DBD::Anydata: DBI access to XML, CSV and other formats.
• DBD::SQLite: A single-file, self-contained RDBMS in a DBI driver.
• DBD::MySQL (and other more heavy-weight databases)

My point is that if you start with the framework for using a database, you can keep it as generic as possible at the higher levels of abstraction, and with minimal changes, substitute any of the wide range of DBD database drivers.

If you wish to layer DBI over flat files, you can start with DBD::Anydata. When it comes time to graduate to a real database, you can use DBD::SQLite, and when that doesn't keep you afloat you can switch to MySQL, PostgreSQL, or some other real database.

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