I would opt for keeping things simple until they need to be complex; in the meantime you've got a working system and can be educating yourself on a more complex build. On a related tangent, I recommend O'Reilly's "Programming the Perl DBI". It covers everything from simple flatfile databases to SQL-based interfaces (and when you would use what) with a lot of examples high-lighting very useful methods and idioms, as well as what amounts to a decent primer in SQL strewn throughout. Luck, clairudjinn