Don't write this yourself. Please. There are many hidden issues in this problem - I speak from way too much experience. There are many more levels of authority than you think. There are the people authorized to enter problems, the people authorized to assign problems, the people authorized to answer them and the people authorized to close them. Of course, you also have the people authorized to authorize people.

Having solved all of those, you then need to worry about database corruption which will happen when using flat files. After you have solved this, there are a hundred more hurdles to jump. And then, when you are all done, you will never escape it. It will hang about your neck like a dead albatross. You will be supporting this thing for years.

Please, trust me. Find something else somebody has written and abuse that. DO NOT WRITE THIS FROM SCRATCH!

In this light, I direct you to Freshmeat's development/bug tracking section. There are a few good choices in there, including several that have both web front ends and command line front ends. Many of them have been used and tested extensively. Several of them are free.

Mik - who is still working off therapy dollars from a PTS
mikfire