There are multiple solutions to this problem on CPAN. See the POOP Group summary for a partial catalog.

Among the choices are Class::DBI and my own DBIx::SQLEngine. Using SQLEngine, creating a Perl class for records from a particular table is done as follows:

my $sqldb = DBIx::SQLEngine->new( @dbi_connect_params );
$sqldb->record_class( $tablename, $classname, 'Accessors' );

my $record = $classname->select_record( $primary_key );
print $record->column1();
$record->column2( $new_value );
$record->update_record();
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