...well, their assertion holds a bit of water, I suppose. After all, even a sieve holds a bit of water.

What is meant by "a truly OO language"? Perl does OO stuff, some of it quite well, other parts with some difficulty. What languages are "truly OO"?

If there is an API, one can probably put a Perl face on it. On the other hand, unless the database supports SQL, or something sufficiently isomorphic, DBI will probably not be as helpful as one might like.