Develop cross-platform Client/Server + Web?

[JoshLindenmuth]

My company is about to embark on a long term development effort (2 years) to create a new client/server + web application. Since a few hundred clients are using our existing Microsoft VC++ front-end, we need to maintain a thick-client Microsoft GUI application. However, I'd like to develop much of the new business logic to be cross-platform. This way we could port the server side code to Linux when we rollout a web-based version of the software.

So here's my 2 questions (we're traditionally a Microsoft shop, but prefer to migrate all in-house servers to Linux, so excuse my ignorance):

1. Given that we must use Microsoft for our client, what language and middleware would best enable us to utilize the same server-side code on both Linux and Windows?

2. Can we get php/apache to interface with our database using the cross-platform server code we developed for our Microsoft application? Would we use CORBA/COM/OTHER?

Thanks in advance,

[fatTrav]

Have you looked into using the .NET framework? The Mono Project (http://mono-project.com/about/index.html) aims to make as much of what Microsoft does with .NET available on linux.

"Mono includes a compiler for the C# language, an ECMA-compatible runtime engine (the Common Language Runtime, or CLR),and class libraries. The libraries include Microsoft .NET compatibility libraries (including ADO.NET and ASP.NET)..."

PHP has built in support for just abuot every major db out there. I can't find the link to the page that lists, but I will post it when I find it. Odds are if php has that db built in then you can get apache to work with it as well.

[ph34r]

Why not do the whole thing via Web to begin with? Your "client" could be a stripped down/very customized version of Firefox ....

[JoshLindenmuth]

I don't see how we could create everything via the web ... our client software is data entry intensive, must not require the mouse, and incorporate quite a few fast and flexible grids (Java is not an option due to performance).

Also, wouldn't we need to provide an Apache server to all of our clients to enable this? We can't have them connect via the web, as ~50% have no internet connectivity.

Thanks for your thoughts, if I'm off-base in my thinking, I'd love to hear your reply.

Regards,

[goon12]

You might want to look into SOAP for your client/server communication.
http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-soap12-part0-20030624/
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/newto/

I also agree with fatTrav, reading/writing XML and XML Schema with C#, is simple. Because it's in XML it's pretty much cross platform.

There is a mono apache module ( mod_mono ) too.

-goon12