I would use something like Class::DBI::Loader to keep the data model definition in one place, and there has recently been a hack on the cdbi mailing list to create "unbound" Class::DBI-like mock objects that one can manipulate and only later save into the database (or not at all).

Here is the mail by Peter Speltz, a tentative name is Class::DBI::Plugin::Temp.

In reply to Re: many-many relations in object modeling by Corion
in thread many-many relations in object modeling by other90percent

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