web interface to c program running on different server

[Lee]

Hi there,

I wonder if anyone reading this could be kind enough to offer me some
advice. There is a piece of software being developed in C for performing
various scientific calculations on various types of data. I have been
asked to investigate the ways in which this could be made into a web
application - specifically, a portal. Reimplementing the program in
another language is not one I wish to investigate, as I believe the
software has gone through months of testing already.

I can think of a few solutions, but I would appreciate the insight and
advice of those with more experience than myself. I am working on the
premise that the software written in C will be running on server X and
the software creating the interface and the portal will be on server Y
(with a database on server Z). I have a little experience with Java
Servlets and Zope, and believe that both could be used to implement
this. This may also be an opportunity to develop new skills like
learning perl, etc.

One solution I understand would be to create an interface to the
software using Zope & XML-RPC, and then using Zope Content Management
Framework to create a portal. Of course, there may be hundreds(?) of
ways to arrive at the desired results - using e.g. ASP, PHP, perl. If
anyone out there has worked on similar projects, or simply has some
recommendations, I should very much appreciate their thoughts.

Ideally, I'd like to have maybe 5 or 6 different implementation
suggestions with an associated set of pros and cons for each, so I'd
love to hear lots of suggestions!

Thanks very much in advance,

Lee