itunes api

I would like to "fix" the names of the artists in my iTunes library. At least... I think I want to do this 😁

For example, if the artist is "Joe Johnson", I'd like to set the "sort as" field to "Johnson, Joe". Utopia would be to create a list of mappings e.g. "Joe Johnson" => "Johnson, Joe" and then run through my iTunes library for each mapping searching for the left and setting the "sort as artist" field to what is on the right.

Perhaps I can do this with AppleScript but I'd rather do it with a real language like Ruby but if I"m forced to do it via Apple Script, I suppose I could try that. Or... perhaps there is already a "not too hard" way to do this.

By the way... I see there is an iTunes API for searching but it doesn't appear to be able to do any modifications to an existing library.