I'm not a Java guy so someone might need to correct me but I think this is not at all surprising since many modern regular expression libraries are based at least loosely on Perl's syntax (Java's java.util.regex and PHP's for example). Perl and Java both have pluggable regular expression engines now too so you can probably get whatever you want in either.

What might be more interesting, around here anyway, is how easy it would be to port the DB portion of your code from Java to Perl, say with DBIx::Class or Rose::DB or even raw DBI. I suspect you'd end up with a speed gain and more maintainable, flexible, extensible code. Regular expressions are not likely to be the reason any given hacker chooses Perl or Java for a big project.