Web page displaying a PowerBuilder datawindow as PDF

Question

I have a datawindow that takes one argument. I have a PowerBuilder 12.5 Classic application that takes this argument from the command line, retrieves the datawinddow, saves as PDF and exits. I have a webserver Windows running IIS and PHP. There is a PHP page that gets the argument, runs the commandline PowerBuilder application, gets the PDF output and displays it. The net result is: a dynamic web page that displays a datawindow, and can be saved as PDF from a web user. But now, I need to do the same on a Linux server. I considered the following options:

1) Use Wine to run the PowerBuilder 12.5 Classic application

2) Convert the application to PowerBuilder .net (I have already done this) and then run it on the web server using Mono

3) Using datawindow.net and running it under Linux in some way

Which method would you choose? Of course, if you see a better way let me know.

Answer 1

I would take a different approach.

Write your component as a .NET web service. The method would take the existing commandline arguments, retrieve the datawindow, save as a PDF, then return the .PDF file as the BLOB return value. The calling routine can do whatever it wants with the output - display it on the screen, save as a local file, print it.