Hello all.
I have a Very Happy client whose users are clicking away to their
heart's content on his ACS 3.4.10 system
that we built for him using Oracle on Linux. This client has just
presented us with a problem he would like solved:
he has a proprietary Win32 dll he would like the application to be
able to call. I don't have the source code but
do know the inputs to and outputs from the dll.
I've been considering a few ways of achieving this goal (performance
and cost may or may not be goals here).
I can break this task down to:
Get a Windows or Windows-like OS that will run the dll.
Find a way of running the dll.
Find a way of transporting the output from the dll to the ACS.
3 possible solutions are:
1. get a Windows box, put the dll on it, write a wrapper program to
call it. Put a webserver on the Windows box, get that
to call the wrapper program on a page. Hook that page into one of my
ACS pages using ns_httpget or something. Extra cost
and hassle of supporting a new server.
2. Using something like VMWare or Wine, use my current Linux box and
put the dll on it. Maybe output to some format somewhere
both Win32 and Linux can see? AOLserver can then pick up this output.
3. find some magic piece of software that allows Win32 dlls to be
called from Linux and then use AOLserver's exec command!
Should I be looking at XML-RPC or SOAP?
Tips and pointers greatly appreciated.