[development] ASP Integration with Drupal?

[David Metzler]

I have done a ton of MSSQL integration with drupal.  Here's the  
strategies I use.

1.  When directly connecting to MSSQL databases, I actually use the  
ADODB library.   It's really similar to the ADODB stuff you find in  
ASP so it makes porting a breeze.  If you're using PHP 5 you can  
foreach iterate the returned record sets.  I chose this library  
because it's a good platform agnostic way of getting at DB's but  
doesn't confuse the issue with drupal.   I use the drupal API's for  
all things non-database.  It doesn't conflict at all with drupal's  
stuff.

2.  I also have written several .NET consuming apps in a REST web  
services style to consume data from the ASP or .net apps. The ASP  
(or .NET) pages simply display (based on get or post parameters)  
either hand rolled XML or key value pairs like on a URL parameter  
var1=foo&var2=bar etc.  Which you choose depends on the complexity of  
the data. Again PHP 5 is a big bonus here for the parsing of XML  
(simplexml rocks for this).

I have some students at my school developing an integration module  
for a 3rd party app with a  that might be simple enough too  
illustrate the direct DB connect option.   I'd be willing to send on  
a sample module if that would help you out.

FYI: ADODB is a php only library, so installing it is a breeze.  It  
layers on the normal php db functions.  I've also successfully run  
ADODB connecting to mssql on windows platforms.


On Aug 15, 2007, at 11:00 AM, Ron Dorman wrote:

> A client wants to move an existing site to Drupal.
>
> The catch is that the existing site has two pages that are ASP. The  
> ASP pages connect to a 3rd party hosted backoffice package and  
> database.
>
> The clients current site is on a dedicated leased Win / IIS / Plesk  
> Control Panel server. The Plesk package provides php 5.2 and MySQL  
> 5 so I do not believe we will have any issues installing and  
> running Drupal on the server.
>
> Does anyone know of any development, module, etc. that would allow  
> us to integrate the ASP data into Drupal?
>
> Any other gotchas I should be looking for?
>
> Thank you all for the work you do and for the Drupal software.
>
> Ron D.