Newbie Question: Would Java allow me to do this....

[Guest_imported]

I have a project in mind, and I need to know if my idea is feasible. I've got no experience with Java (yet) as my background is mainly ASP/VB.

I want to create an application on the server which generates a text report, one line at a time.

Meanwhile, on another computer, a client applet would be able to view this text report as it's generated, as well as stop the process, so that they interact with the application and change variables within it before it carries on. There may be up to 2 client connections to the application.

Additionally, if it doesn't slow it down too much, other clients could connect so that they could view the text, but not be able to interact with it.

Finally, when the process is finished, the resulting text should be placed into a text file.

I thought it might be possible for the server to append each line of text to the text file. The client could then stream in this text file. However, I think this might be too slow as the server would be writing a line to the text file continuously.

There would be 48 of these applications needed to be run simultaneously, each with it's own set of variables, and a max of 2 client connections each.

Am I hoping for too much? Should I be looking at other technologies or just drop this idea altogether for being too ambitious?

The rest of the site is done in ASP and SQL Server 7, and it has been suggested that I move to JSP and a Java Server or it'll affect performance due to having IIS and a java server running together. As I have more experience in ASP, and VB etc, I had hoped to keep it on this platform as I had intended to start using COM Objects etc to improve performance. To rewrite it all in JSP would seem like the last resort, as I'd need to learn it first!

I hope this isn't too vague, but I don't want to give too much away about the project at this stage.

 

[stephendfrancis]

My suggestion would be to use a database table instead of a file - databases are designed for simultaneous multi-process querying and updating - and to use JSP instead of Applets. Then the client processes are all executed on the server and the only thing crossing the network is HTML.

One of your client processes could update a control table which the main process could periodically re-query and alter its behaviour accordingly, whilst the other simply queries the main table and outputs as HTML.

Of course, this method could use ASP and SQL Server 7, keeping the site on a single technology platform.

 

[Guest_imported]

The problem is that the process will not last that long, and it really does need to be paused while the client decides what changes to make. This is because by the time the client has made a change, the process would have been running even longer.

This is why I think I need applets of some kind, so that it can send a call to the process and make it stop. I don't think ASP would allow me this kind of interaction.