It is certainly possible to create, say, a hash which contains an arrayref which in turn contains a list of references to records. It's also certainly possible to create more than one such structure which refers-to the same record.

In other words... “oh yes, you can do this in Perl, but...”

But before I proceeded too far in that direction, I think I'd be asking myself this hard question:   “is what I really want to use here just ‘an SQL database?’ ”

When your well-laid plans begin to “smell funny,” follow your gut.