Check out Tangram. It uses exactly the same techniques to allow you to write you're SQL where clauses in Perl

my @simpsons = $storage->select( $person,
        $person->{name} eq 'Simpson' & $person->{age} > 35
);
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So in this case $person represents a table with a fields "name" and "age". $person->{name} gives you an overloaded object similar to your example.

It would be cool if you could get together with Sam Villain and produce an independent module to handle this as I've wanted to use it myself in the past.

It's not immediately obvious on search.cpan.org but the guided tour for Tangram is in a file named tour. Look down to "Filtering" for more examples of this.