I'm in the process of designing the requirements for some business intelligence software that my organization wants to begin developing in-house. Part of the design process is obviously the technology behind the appllication. My programming experience lies more in VB and Perl so I'm new to building actual controls. The project we're looking at involves 3 components, 1) a piece of client software, 2) a web server reporting tool, and 3) a database. For #2 and #3 we pretty much know what technology we want to use however, #1 is still a blank spot. The client software needs to be able to install directly from a web browser and be able to perform select tasks on the client machine at configurable intervals. Then when the client reconnects to the web site, or after a given period of time, the client will send its findings back to the web server in some format, probably XML? What language would be advisable to use for this if we chose to do this via Active X? We primarily would be targeting Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003 machines, but later we would create client packages for Linux and other flavors of Unix.
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Question About ActiveX Controls
- Thread starter heprox
- Start date
NoCoolHandle
Programmer
Bottom line. Pick a language..
VB is ok (if you only target windows) however if you really need linux and unix, you will need to work a bit harder and develop in Java..
You might also want to evaluate .net. There is a really slick "single click deploy" feature built into .net. You just have to have the framework installed on the client (it will install it if it is needed, but things will run smoother and faster if it is already there) and point to the exe in your website (or to an msi file) and the browser will do the rest. Install, build shortcuts and then you can communicate back to your website.
I would recomend you look at sharing your data via a webservice. This will greatly inhance your choice of client technologies in the future! Again .net will simplify this process, but no matter what your choice of developments tools, Webservices are easy to work with in any environmennt that understands XML and gets around many firewall problmes.
They also remove your total dependence on a browser and might make it easier to move to linux/unix later.
HTH
Rob
VB is ok (if you only target windows) however if you really need linux and unix, you will need to work a bit harder and develop in Java..
You might also want to evaluate .net. There is a really slick "single click deploy" feature built into .net. You just have to have the framework installed on the client (it will install it if it is needed, but things will run smoother and faster if it is already there) and point to the exe in your website (or to an msi file) and the browser will do the rest. Install, build shortcuts and then you can communicate back to your website.
I would recomend you look at sharing your data via a webservice. This will greatly inhance your choice of client technologies in the future! Again .net will simplify this process, but no matter what your choice of developments tools, Webservices are easy to work with in any environmennt that understands XML and gets around many firewall problmes.
They also remove your total dependence on a browser and might make it easier to move to linux/unix later.
HTH
Rob
- Thread starter
- #3
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