First networking script, interfaces, introduction

[gunslingor]

Hi all, I'm new to scripting for networking... in the past, I've written scripts for all types of hosts and clients, but I always ran these locally and now I'm a telecom engineer and I'm only dealing with networking devices currently. So I need some background and info to point me in the right direction.

So here is what I am trying to accomplish: basically, to start, I'm trying to get basic interface data out of all our cisco products and into a database. The fields defined in this DB currently include the following:

key - the device key for which all the below belong to.
INTERFACE - interface name/designation
IP_ADDRESS - obvious
SUBNET_MASK - obvious
MAC_ADDRESS - obvious
DOMAIN_NAME - obvious
DESCRIPTION - obvious
VLN_INTERFACES -which physical interfaces belong to which VLAN
STANDBY_IP - the failover IP
NOTES - obvious

Right now I'm attacking this task for the catalyst 2950/60s; once I get this I far I should have all the knowledge I need to carry the task further.

I've experimented with a number of commands (e.g "show ip interface brief" and "show vlan brief") that show some of this data, but obviously not in a DB importable form.

1. So the first question is, "will it be possible to precisely get this output in a DB importable form using the pipe operator, or is this just far to much customizing for the pipe to handle?". If yes, got any hints?
2. In the script, or even in the session itself, how do I make the output go to a text file or similar so that it can be imported directly without having to COPY/PASTE(perhaps parsed first if necessary, which I can handle that part)?
3. How do I run/create scripts that, I suppose, would use secureCRT or putty to a) connect b)run the script c)output to a text file on my computer.
4. What's the best web reference you guys know of for whatever scripting language you're going to tell me to use?

I may actually try connecting locally at the console port using putty instead of remotely using secure CRT, fyi.... this is prefered since I'm newer on the networking stuff.

Any comment is appreciated... I feel I just need a little help getting my feet wet... I've never met a programming language I couldn't tackle, but this situation is a bit different due to the unfamilar components and potentially remote accesses over a WAN/LAN.