Need to Learn Perl

I need to learn Perl. Or maybe PHP, but Perl would probably be more useful.

Right off the bat, I’d work on an IP address database. We use a modified version of IPSpace that just hasn’t scaled well for us.

This is what I’d like to have:

• Ease of use. Our developers need to add and delete their own entries in the system.
• The system should tie into LDAP for user authentication (for edits, viewing shouldn’t require authentication.)
  • The system should show who created and last edited an entry
• The system should ping check each host to make sure it’s up (red icon = down, green icon = up)
• Given that we have a large number of subnets, it should have links at the top of the page to jump to the subnet that you need
• Searchable/sortable fields by owner/location/etc.
• Obviously store the data in a MySQL database

The problem is that I don’t know much about database structure (so it’d be hard to make a schema), and that I have very little motivation to sit down and learn a new programming language. If this needed to be done in Atari BASIC I could whip it up in a few days, I’m sure.

It amazes me, though, that nobody has created a piece of software that does this well. IPSpace comes the closest, but it hasn’t been updated since 2004. IPPlan looks overcomplicated.

Other apps I would like to write something to replace:

Nagios - why can’t there be a simple, easy FOSS network monitoring system?

RT - ugh, overcomplicated ugly garbage. Doesn’t even send an email with what was done in the ticket to the requestor when the ticket is closed, by default.