Hi all:
I want to call some COM-based API from an application that is running
on a Windows XP based machine. The calling application runs on another
machine, also on a different OS (most probably Mac OS X).
The calling app will be written in AllegroCL and is, as already
mentioned,
running on OS X.
Now the question is:
Does it require a server app running on the Windows XP machine that
translates requests from the calling app into COM calls for the target
app and vice versa?
This being the only solution I have in mind there might be some better
approaches. How would you do this? I am a total newbie in terms of
XP and COM and VBScript (the advertised API for the target app)
so any pointers really appreciated here.
TIA!
Frank
···········@prion.de wrote:
> Hi all:
>
> I want to call some COM-based API from an application that is running
> on a Windows XP based machine. The calling application runs on another
> machine, also on a different OS (most probably Mac OS X).
>
> The calling app will be written in AllegroCL and is, as already
> mentioned,
> running on OS X.
>
> Now the question is:
>
> Does it require a server app running on the Windows XP machine that
> translates requests from the calling app into COM calls for the target
> app and vice versa?
>
> This being the only solution I have in mind there might be some better
> approaches. How would you do this? I am a total newbie in terms of
> XP and COM and VBScript (the advertised API for the target app)
> so any pointers really appreciated here.
>
> TIA!
>
> Frank
If you have IIS on the Windows box you can host any COM API as a SOAP
service. Microsoft has a toolkit (search MSDN for it) to generate the
stubs. It's pretty easy to set up. Some caveats. If your interaction
with the API consists of lots of small granular calls there will be
some network overhead. API methods that take a long time to complete
may time out the HTTP connection. Additionally, not all SOAP services
are the same and the generated SOAP interface is MS specific and may
not be recognizable to your SOAP client software. Given those caveats,
it is quick to setup and works okay.
Thanks for the hints.
As I unfortunately can't install IIS on the targert machine and given
the MS proprietary SOAP stuff I'd rather want to have a translation app
using a bare sockets infterface that translates a higher level API into
the (as you guessed correctly) rather fine grained API of the target
app.
Oh, I notice I haven't said that the target app is E.3series (from
CIM-Team, www.cimteam.de), an ECAD application. The task will be to
interface this ECAD system to PLM systems like UGS TeamCenter and SAP
PLM...
Thanks again for the hints and concrete points on possible pitfalls.
Cheers
Frank