Damned decent posting :D ... just a coupla suggestions tho'...

• Step 5 - Use a stringified ref. to provide straightforward visual comparison of 2, or more, ref.s - I've recently been using this to verify that a ref. in 2 different places is actually the same object.
• Step 7 - add use autodie; to provide default exception throwing on failure
• Step 7 & 8 - add use CGI::Carp; for CGI/WWW scripts
• Your final observation WRT IDEs etc. could, IMHO, suggest that the use of Eclipse, for perl dev't, isn't for the fainthearted...

Just a thought...