I'm not familiar with Unidata, so please forgive me if I some of what I say here is inapplicable. That said, here's my 30 second brainstorm idea:

1) Write an implementation of the DBI::Proxy(Server) bits that goes over your telnet interface. This still suffers from the slow-connect problem.

2) Write (or extend an existing) connection pooling system. This will manage having the slow telnet/database connection done ahead of time and in the background. Depending on how your system works, this might end up being something akin to another DBI::Proxy(Server) pair, where the pool is kept in a server daemon and your application sends its information through that daemon.