F5 iControl Q's - Part 1: F5 iControl web based proxy?

Interesting question. Here's my two pennies;

You need to think about this in terms of front end and back end. PHP is a good choice for the front end presentation. In terms of back end I'd suggest Python; it seems to be one of the languages of choice in the wider networking field where SDN, NFV and 'programability' seem to be concerned so it'll benefit you in other ways I'd say. It also seems to be a part of the Sythesis fabric 'concept'. Groovy is too but I'm really not sure if it's a better candidate than Python, should be just as easy to use though (mimics Python in most ways).

Of course, you now have the REST functionality (as well as straight iControl) too which might help you with 2) and 3) above. I read it's not so great for real time so for 1) it sounds like straight iControl would be better but of course I've no way of making an informed comparison (yet).

One thing that seems to be missed/overlooked/hidden from most opinion and comments on this subject is a database. You'll need one I would have thought and I guess MySQL is the de-facto standard for that (LAMP and all that). A bit of general reading on relational databases would come in handy I'm sure.