How to link ASP .NET and a program?

[James]

Hi,

I working on an ASP .NET project, in this project I need to link my project
with another program to retrieve data, how can I do that? I have access to
source code of the other program where the data is stored.

Can I convert the program to a web service and then in my ASP .NET project
access the web service?

The program basically parse weather data for the day periodically and store
it, and I want to retrieve this data to be used on my ASP .NET project.

Hope someone can help!

Thank You!!!

 

[Jean Paul Mertens]

Hello James,

A few things to know before I can give sugestions:

- Do jou know how the collected data is stored by your windows program
- Is the data accessable from your webserver

Greets

 

[James]

Hello Jean Paul,

Thanks for replying!

Yes, I do know how the collected data is stored by the windows program, a
listview is used in the program to stored the data collected.

Regarding your next question about whether the data is accessible from the
webserver? I'm afraid that I do not get what you mean. But the program is
suppose to be ran like a background process on the same server that I'll be
using to host my ASP .NET project.

What I wish to do is that my ASP page will be able to query the program,
such that the data will be returned to the ASP page.

Thank you!!!

 

[Guest]

I working on an ASP .NET project, in this project I need to link my
project with another program to retrieve data, how can I do that? I
have access to source code of the other program where the data is
stored.

Can I convert the program to a web service and then in my ASP .NET
project access the web service?

Remoting and Web Services are two options... Perhaps start with remoting
(tho remoting is ugly)..

Another method is to go through a database.

 

[Jean Paul Mertens]

James,

I think the best thing to do is looking at the program you have on how it is
reading the data and using the very same code to read data into your ASP.NET
application as a string and fill a listbox. Just you have to be aware on the
security settings on the file or whatever where the data is stored in. You
have to have permision to read the file with the asp-user account.

cu.

JP

 

[James]

Hi Jean Paul,

To be exact the program is kinda complex, as it does a few things,
1. parse a http response to obtain weather information periodically
2. establish a telnet connection with a 3rd party engine and parse data
obtain through telnet

The 2 above steps are implemented as threads and are always running. The
data that I want to get is the processed results of the 2 steps. As I'm
quite new to ASP .NET programming, I'm not to sure if I could implement all
this into ASP codes. As I have read that using threads in ASP could be
unsafe.

Please enlighten!

Thank you!

 

[James]

Hi,

Thanks for replying!

I did a implementation of using a database, but thinking further I realise
that I might have some problem.

Program does:
1. read data containing current clients' ip addresses
2. update data to database using the ip address as a search key
(basically I'm using a update command to update the database record)

ASP codes does:
1. When client access the page, and the page updates client's ip address to
database
2. Page will load data related to client obtain from the database using
client's ip address as key
(the data mention is loaded by the program above during Step 2)

Thus if the client does not log in, I'll not be able to update the data to
the database as the ip does not exist.

As mention in previous reply, I'm quite new to ASP .NET regarding remoting
and web services, I"m afraid that I do not have much knowledge about them.

Please guide me along!!!

Thank You!!!