best programming language for console/sql application?

[Zhang Weiwu]

Dear list

This is OT. I am a 4 year php developer and is very familiar with 
javascript and awk (familiar = knows and used all functions and features 
of the language itself) and I am a 5 year FreeBSD user. Being frustrated 
for the lack of a good console-based issue tracking tool (like mantis or 
bugzilla), I think I should start to write my own. I'll either start 
from scratch or (better) write a frontend for mantis which I used for years.

   1. If someone has already started, I should try join him/her rather
      than reinventing the wheel. So if someone knows any person who is
      starting to work on a slim console-based issue tracker, please let
      me know. I already did quit a few searches. I know someone is
      working on a console front-end of G-Forge, but a big software like
      G-Forge is not what I am thinking of.
   2. If I start my own, I think I'll be using a console widget library
      (ncurse? because it's famous), an SQL database (no problem) and a
      programming language. I never developed console application
      before, so here asking for suggestions on what programming
      language to choose. Non of my known language php/javascript/awk
      are suitable so I guess I have to learn a new language anyway. The
      language better be easy to learn and work with (C++ is out), not
      necessarily have complicated calculation feature (like the
      graphical report mantis makes), not necessarily OOP. I have perl
      and tcl in my head now, can you make some recommendations?

Thanks!