If you need to update the data dynamically, you can have the applet make an HTTP call to the Perl CGI running on the server. In that case, Perl should output the data as plain text instead of HTML. So on the server side your code would look like (adopting ikegami's example):

print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
my $param = 1;
foreach my $fields (@$data) {
   my $name = $param++;
   my $value = join('|', @$fields);
   print "$value\n";
}
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and on the client, you would have a method to retrieve the data (assuming your users have the Java Plug-in with JRE1.4 or above):

import java.net.URL;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

...

URL url = new URL(getCodeBase(), "/cgi-bin/getmydata.pl"); // or whate
+ver
HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) con.openConnection();
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(con.getIn
+putStream()));
String s;
int count = 0;
while ((s = in.readLine()) != null) {
    String[] fields = s.split("\\|");
    count++;
    // do something with count and fields
}
in.close();
con.disconect();
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This takes advantage of the fact that when you use a URLConnection in an applet, it automatically picks up the appropriate proxy settings, user-agent, cookies etc from the browser. Also remember that the CGI will have to live on the same server as the applet unless the applet is signed (for security reasons).