You might be interested in reading about the P5EE project, which aims to come up with a standard solution for such things.

"Standard" being a relative term. TMTOWTDI, and as the project says, they aim to provide "one great way to do it."

As for how suitable Perl is, I can say that at work we've used Perl exclusively for implementing things such as a domain registrar system, and just about everything else we do.

Perl's suitability, like Java's, is largely a matter of perspective. I gather a lot of "suits" have been made to believe it must be Java for it to work, and I'm sure Java does have its advantages in certain situations. I'm fortunate not to work with any suits, so I have no first hand experience on that matter.

Other companies who maybe are more open-minded have had great success with Perl (i.e. Ticketmaster).