You can set up your Catalyst models to be just that. For many users, their Catalyst "Model" component is just a DBIx::Class or Class::DBI stepchild (with table-specific model-specific functions and whatnot) with a fancy module/class name. They reuse that same model code both from the Catalyst MVC framework and from other non-web components (like cron jobs doing database maintenance, or backend servers that log data to the same database the Catalyst app is viewing).