It might be a bit difficult - I mean if all the infrastructure is build for java than there wan't be much place for perl. There will always be friction on the boundary between the languages. Of course I don't say it is impossible, the obvious strategy would be to minimalize the boundary - by using perl for well separated tasks where you can define a simple interface to the rest of the system. If you would do it right than obviously this would succeed. But I would say it is not an excercise for the initiates.