Dealing with http params: APR::Request::Param::Table et al?

[Jeff]

Folks,

What classes/approach do you recommend for a mod_perl applications 
interaction with the params and args of an HTTP request?

I want to wrap up dealing with GET POST UPDATE COOKIE and all other 
aspects of an HTTP request in a simple, easy to use interface for 
application programmers. Dare I say, somewhat similar to the $_REQUEST 
approach al' la PHP (ducks).

I started with an investigation of Apache2::Request, and come to the 
documentation that says:
  my $table = $req->param();
where $table is an APR::Request::Param::Table object.

I cannot seem to find details of this objects interface? I assumed that 
this was possibly an APR::Table, but I find that
  my $table = $req->param;
  $table->compress(APR::Const::OVERLAP_TABLES_MERGE);

gives:
 Can't locate object method "compress" via package
   APR::Request::Param::Table

so I am wondering - application level mod_perl development must have 
some simpler, reasonably efficient wrapper classes for parsing GET POST 
UPDATE and COOKIE params from HTTP requests?

Any recommendations appreciated.

Regards
Jeff

PS. I have Debian Sarge(stable) backports from Etch available for:
  libapache2-mod-perl2 (2.0.1)
  libapache2-mod-apreq2 (2.06)
  libapache2-request-perl (2.06)

If anyone is interested, or has a repository to publish them.

I am a backport newbie, but gave up waiting for an up-to-date mod_perl2 
for Debian stable (which is stuck at 1.999.21 - prerename ugh! uglies!)