If you ever want to play around with this approach, there is a flat DB that works with CSV files. You will need:
DBI
SQL::Statement
Text::CSV_XS
DBD::CSV

This is fine for small, simple DB. Its of course slower than the "real thing" and doesn't have fancy features, but I've used it before with good results. Since the DB is a CSV file you can look at it in Excel or whatever. And since it uses standard SQL statements, you can migrate to a different DB later if needed.