The key behind DBM::Deep that your flatfiles will not be able to do is that DBM::Deep is low-memory. Everything happens on disk. Presto (an OODBMS built upon DBM::Deep) will take that even further, providing you with the ORM-like syntax without the object-relational impedance mismatch.
My criteria for good software:
Does it work?
Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?