how would you connect a classic asp web application with a java component?

Question

We have several classic asp web application that instantiates a visual basic 6 component, passes a (possibly huge) xml string, and gets back a (also possibly huge) xml string.

This component is the only way we have to interact with the database.

We are planning to rewrite this component using java. The idea is to left the rest of the asp application untouched.

So we need to execute some java component passing and receiving a string, from classic asp running on an iis...

We are looking for something with the less overhead possible (obviously, I'm trying to avoid having a web service call for each db operation)

which would be the best approach to achieve such a thing?

thanks a lot

this is the code we need to migrate:

Private Function ComandoExecute( Xml )
Dim Comando

  Set Comando = Server.CreateObject("TramitesConsultaComando.clsComando")

  ComandoExecute = Comando.execute(Xml)

  Set Comando = Nothing

End Function

The component is a dll that runs thru com+

Answer 1

There are other options for serialization you could look at:

• Plain old HTTP - just encode information in the headers and body. You'll need to use a HTTPClient from ASP for this though.
• JSON - look at http://www.webdevbros.net/2007/04/26/generate-json-from-asp-datatypes/ for generating JSON from ASP datatypes

On the Java side just use a Servlet, you can embed this in something like Jetty or Tomcat. There's a very simple example here:

http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/Embedding+Jetty

Answer 2

you can write socket server on Java which will receive data from aSP.NET pages, ASP.NET will open socket and sent information this is in case you want to avoid HTTP, but I agree with Jon, sending JSON by HTTP using POST command and de-serialize this JSON using Google GSON library is much simpler approach.