Thank you all very much for your helpful advice and insight. I have once again been reassured of the invaluable experience upon which I can draw here at PerlMonks. Not having written a module or package, I must take heed the many warnings of stumbling blocks in solution #2.

I believe I will indeed try to recode the scripts using DBD::Pg as suggested.

To my helpful monks, I've deposited a ++ into your PM account. ;)