MS Windows calling Unix

[Thilo Ernst]

Andrew Dalke wrote:

> Hello,
>
>   I'm interested in getting MS Windows apps talking to
> a set of Unix based services.  To make it easier to
> develop Windows apps, I want to provide the interfaces
> via COM. [...]

>   Then there are the build-it-myself solutions.  I've got
> a copy of the Python for Windows book, and it isn't very
> hard to build a COM server in Python.  I can convert the
> calls to, say, an HTTP request to the server.  Most of
> what I need for the beginning is stateless, so this should
> be fine, but eventually I'll need a stateful solution.
> Think of talking to Zope objects!/usr/home/te/python/dopy/README.txt

Have a look at the DOPY native-Python (and Python-only)
distributed object system. It is to Python what RMI is to Java.
You get fully transparent method invocation, even exceptions
look almost as if they had occurred locally. Works like a charm
and is really easy. First results in one hour or so, because
you don´t have to learn foreign terminology, a different object
model, etc. It´s just Python.

You could run a DOPY server on your Unix box, register your
services as (methods of) some simple-minded Python object(s)
created for the purpose, and call them from a DOPY client on
your Windows machine. You should then be able to expose your
stuff as one or more COM objects on the Windows side by
wrapping the DOPY client into a COM server (of course written
in Python, too).

Note that, as you have objects in all "tiers", this solution is as
stateful as you want it to.

DOPY URL is: http://www.users.cloud9.net/~proteus/dopy

There is a similar but independent system called PYRO which
I however did not try.


Best regards, Thilo