"Consider also using Nagios..."

No doubt, Nagios is good stuff, but i wonder how this hint is related to the OP.

What oikool needs is $? >> 8, isn't it?

Without $? >> 8 he can't neither monitor that service nor restart it.

"...simply configure this service to auto-restart. A “one-of-a-kind” Perl script ought not be required to get this done."

Nope. Nagios can't be simply configured to restart a service. One needs to write an event handler.

You need two scripts to accomplish this: one for the service check and one for the event handler.

And setting up a robust solution for this is still a bit tricky. See State Types a.s.o.

Best regards, Karl