You could just keep the data in memory... or is there a reason not to?

Now on to the question. Any ideas on suggestions to make this quicker and easier?

Quicker to program or quicker to run?

If you want it quicker to run, you could just put the data on a RAM disc instead of a hard disc. If you want it easier to program, you could just use Perl data structures and JSON::XS or Storable for serializing and deserializing.

Currently the use of a DB is not an option.

And what is an option? How much control do you have over your environment? What about non-databases like memcached?