Luke - If a BCB app used the Fastnet controls would another compiler be able to 'talk' to it via TCP/IP ?
TwinRose - You mentioned BCB 6.0. Are you using the VCL or are you still using OWL ?
No matter if you are using the TCP/IP method or the DLL method I believe that the Master program will need to have intimate knowledge of the Slave program and thus would most likely only interface with a select few Slave programs that the coder of the Master program has specifically chosen. There are ways around this by using App Servers and/or J2EE, however, these are really only viable solutions in an enterprise environment. Because of this restriction I don't think that cross-platform is necessarily a concern. Besides there are so few applications available or in development for non-windows OSs.
Luke is correct about the cross platform limitations of DLLs. The only way is to make your interface cdecl and make sure you don't have any functions with variable numbers of parameters. A must more robust interface is via OLE Automation, however, I doubt Java can talk to it.
Practically speaking the only way this will become a reality is if some programmers start providing an interface into their programs, either via TCP/IP or DLL or OLE Automation. So my suggestion is to use your favorite method to expose as much of your program to other programs and then to petition other developers to expose some of their code.
TwinRose - You mentioned BCB 6.0. Are you using the VCL or are you still using OWL ?
No matter if you are using the TCP/IP method or the DLL method I believe that the Master program will need to have intimate knowledge of the Slave program and thus would most likely only interface with a select few Slave programs that the coder of the Master program has specifically chosen. There are ways around this by using App Servers and/or J2EE, however, these are really only viable solutions in an enterprise environment. Because of this restriction I don't think that cross-platform is necessarily a concern. Besides there are so few applications available or in development for non-windows OSs.
Luke is correct about the cross platform limitations of DLLs. The only way is to make your interface cdecl and make sure you don't have any functions with variable numbers of parameters. A must more robust interface is via OLE Automation, however, I doubt Java can talk to it.
Practically speaking the only way this will become a reality is if some programmers start providing an interface into their programs, either via TCP/IP or DLL or OLE Automation. So my suggestion is to use your favorite method to expose as much of your program to other programs and then to petition other developers to expose some of their code.