Interfacing with external application

[Gilbert]

I guess I'm probably pushing it here, but I've been charged with
web-enabling a third-party quote generation engine. The quote-generation
engine (it generates life insurance quotes) is a self contained windows app
with no obvious way of pushing data into it.

So I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of scripting engine (rather
like unit testing, or a windows test suite) either Java based or that I can
interface with from a Java class(es) that will allow me to drive the
quotation engine by filling on the data entry screens on the back end
server and capture the results to pass back to the client.

If anyone has done anything similair I'd be grateful for suggestions on how
to go about this.

Regards

 

[Daniel Pitts]

I guess I'm probably pushing it here, but I've been charged with
web-enabling a third-party quote generation engine. The quote-generation
engine (it generates life insurance quotes) is a self contained windows app
with no obvious way of pushing data into it.

So I guess what I'm looking for is some sort of scripting engine (rather
like unit testing, or a windows test suite) either Java based or that I can
interface with from a Java class(es) that will allow me to drive the
quotation engine by filling on the data entry screens on the back end
server and capture the results to pass back to the client.

If anyone has done anything similair I'd be grateful for suggestions on how
to go about this.

Regards

If you have access to the source code of your windows app, you could try
putting JNI hooks into it. If not I would suggest re-writing the
program as a Java library. I can't imagine that the quotation engine is
so complicated that re-creating it in Java is harder than the head-ache
you'll get from creating (and maintaining) such a monstrosity as you've
suggested (a web-service that interacts with a windows gui!? If you are
forced to do this, quit while you can!)

The other alternative is to ask the original developers for some hook
into the app that allows you to pass data in through command line
arguments, and get the data out in the console. at least then you have
some flexibility. Still not ideal. My suggestion remains. Create a Java
library that does what the program does, and then create a Servlet that
utilizes that library.

 

[Roedy Green]

I guess I'm probably pushing it here, but I've been charged with
web-enabling a third-party quote generation engine. The quote-generation
engine (it generates life insurance quotes) is a self contained windows app
with no obvious way of pushing data into it.

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/robot.html

It might be a start.

what can the app do? display on screen? write to a file, do a web
query? answer a web query?