The documentation on how to tell Class::DBI what to do is in the documentation for Class::DBI. Because Maypole ties in closely with Class::DBI, a good knowledge of Class::DBI is necessary for using Maypole, at least that's my opinion on the things. You should read the documentation of Class::DBI and maybe look around on the Class::DBI wiki and mailing list to get a feel for the problems people have with Class::DBI. Then you can move on towards Maypole, but I recommend you start out with a supported database implementation, like DBD::SQLite.