web interface to c program running on different server

Lee lee.reilly at usa.net
Tue Jul 17 06:43:49 CEST 2001

I wasn't asking the readers to provide me with a list of pros and cons -
those would be for me to figure out when I have a few suggestions for
implementations. I am not asking for any amount of great detail. I am
mostly interested in te following:

1- Ways in which C programs can be accessed using a Web browser e.g. server
side software (ASP?) providing an interface on a seperate server to that on
which the C program is running.
2- Web technologies that can be used to create Web portals e.g. Zope CMF
and perhaps the JA-SIG u-Portal.

I am no stranger to programming or web developement (using Servlets /
Zope), but I have no idea of ways in which a piece of software written in C
can be accessed in such a fashion.

As for the the questions, I consider them to be mostly irrelevant but...

> Can you provide background on the platforms the various servers
> you describe have to run?  (Linux, Windows, undefined?)

Most probably Linux.

> Can you discuss the requirements in terms of performance
> (required throughput, volume, number of hits, latency, whatever)?

Not really. No more than 1000 hits per day I expect. Bandwidth would not
really be an issue as uploads will be mainly small plain text files / small
application files.

> Is this commercial (implying money to pay for certain kinds
> of development) or a freebie (implying you are willing to trade
> off cost savings against perhaps reduced sophistication)?

It's going to be a student work project and won't be commercial. The people
responsible for the software would like others (in other universities) to
be able to use it. To be honest, I have only a rough description of the
software myself, but I believe that most of my problems will come from
simply getting data to the software from a client browser, processing, and
returning the new data. As for the 'sophistication' - if you mean in terms
of functionality or look and feel, then that won't be a problem. The
functionality is already in place. If you're talking about
security/redundancy/anything else(!) then that probably will be an
important issue - once that I will be investigating.

> If you provide more detail, maybe you'll get responses more
> closely tailored to your application and needs, rather than just
> a bunch of random suggestions.  In other words, do you really
> want everyone to play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, or could
> you take off the blindfold and point us in the right direction?

Random suggestions would be a start, but I hope this has cleared things up
a little...

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