I gave myself two weeks or so on Catalyst and on DBIx::Class, got a lot of help from castaway and mst, but still wasn't able to get it sufficiently to use it, so turned to CGI::Application instead. It's more mature than Catalyst and has a host of plugins that take care of interfaces to modules like DBI and Template::Toolkit

The Catalyst team is a bunch of very bright people, and I found them to be very patient and helpful. You got further than I did .. so I guess it depends on time. If you have the scheduling leeway, go ahead and try Catalyst. If not, it might be safer to go with something that you can use and get your project done within your scheduled time. Your call.

And be sure to let us know how it all goes.