Creating a Web Wrapper for COM and OCX

Question

Hi guys,

Today we have a windows application that, using an OCX, creates a web page (visible by a WebBrowser control in a small .NET WinForm application) and communicates through COM to the main application/client. (not relevant but this is Pascal)

I'm currently responsible to re create this application in a web environment so we can have the same functionality shared through Web as the user can see the same in a Web Browser.

The Windows application has almost 4 years on it and I need to re create everything from scratch, and all the bugs/features find in the future in the Windows Application I have to re create them again in the Web...

Ohh well, you can see where this will end.

I was thinking... is there any way I can create a Wrapper, even using 3rd party commercial objects, to:

• Communicate with the COM Object
• Can expose the content of the OCX

(this in my most confortable language, ASP.NET C#, but other are welcome)

I was thinking out loud, can this be accomplish with a Java Applet? Silverlight 4?

Any ideas or any point to the right road will be appreciated.

Answer 1

You may want to consider using Silverlight 4. Although it's not fully baked (Microsoft announced it as Release Candidate status yesterday or today) it has COM support but will run in a web enabled way.

The fact that your previous application is Windows/OCX tells me that the chief weakness of this approach, which would be platform neutrality, is less of an issue.