A Perl of a Site Map

David Sweet

Every MIS manager I have worked for has had some version of a blank photocopied map of his building's cubes and offices. He'd fill in all the little squares, rectangles, and polygons with user names, IPs, or hostnames. When I needed to find out where a particular user or equipment was located, he'd go through his pile of photocopies until he found the right one. Then I'd replace the equipment or solve the user's problem.

At one of my first job sites, I felt there had to be a better way. I was just learning how to use Perl for CGI programming, but I was able to quickly write a couple of scripts and scan in a blank map. Thus, my first clickable Web-based site map was born. I showed it to my manager, but he was unimpressed. Apparently he was very fond of those dog-eared, penciled-in photocopies.

At my last job, I discovered that my manager didn't even have blank maps for reference. She simply tried to remember the location of equipment and people. Since she had not become attached to any other method, I felt this site was a prime candidate for using my scripts, so I installed them. My manager liked them, but had a few suggestions. After another five weeks of intensive development, I had the final product.