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Considering Java
Posted by Karl Oehling on Tuesday, 24 June 2003, at 12:27 a.m.
We have a VB app written in Visual Studio 6 that does some simple but important things for us. We are seeing a future where the VB app we have will no longer work because of DLL updates and OS changes (we have already had to jump through some hoops to keep it running).
So we are considering re-writing the app in Java to hopefully avoid this problem in the future. But we don't know if Java can do the things that VB does. Here is a list of things that must be duplicated in Java:
(1) The VB app contains an internet browser. Currently our system is mostly programmed in stored procedures residing in the database, and it is accessed via a common browser. We can run most functions through a normal browser, but not all. One thing that VB does with its browser window is "screen scrape" to internet services and save us manual typing to process with these services.
(2) The VB app brings another program (one we do not own and cannot change) to focus - and then sends that program blind keystrokes. Yeah, it's hokey, but it has worked so darn well that we simply cannot justify the money to re-develope that 3rd party program.
(3) We print from the VB app. I think we can safely say that Java can print. I just have to be sure we can skip the print dialog (we need one button printing).
(4) The VB app creates a Crystal Report, using the database, and prints it, and update the database.
(5) The VB app sends emails based on information in the database, and then updates the database on what happed with the email processing. Actually, the VB app simply creates an Outlook object to send the emails. We could just as easily use another 3rd party program via system calls.
We are using a Sybase database running on Linux. The clients all run the VB app in Windows to access that database. We use the ODBC driver provided by Sybase.
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