The 'database' is actually textfiles. There are 3-4 XML documents used within the application, XML::Simple opens and parses them. I appreciate the response.

So it sounds like you're running a CGI that gets compiled every time and also loads and parses its entire data set every time. That may well be the problem and something like SQlite could bring a big boost there. And/or, as others mentioned, FastCGI.