For a simple front-end in a small application, CGI::Application with Template Toolkit is good. The api is relatively simple and direct, compared to big frameworks, and the templates give good seperation of form and function.

I'm not a big fan of db abstraction modules. They all seem to lack in one little way or another that I wind up wanting. If I write as much as possible for vanilla DBI, and isolate the distinctions between drivers in helper modules, I feel like I have more control and better knowledge of how things will work.

I'm sure I could get comfortable with an abstraction if I used it long enough, but I haven't found one that's let me do that yet.