Writing Java server to support existing .NET clients that use remoting?

Question

I am working on an existing system written using .NET 2.0 remoting to integrate a number of embedded clients to a central server. Due to a number of issues, it has become desirable to rewrite the server in Java. Updating the clients is not really viable at this point; there are many of them and they are geographically scattered, so an update would be potentially expensive. To this end, I was wondering what solutions are available to implement a Java server that would be compatible with the existing over-the-wire protocol?

I am aware of JNBridgePro, but it is unfortunately too expensive for our current budget. I also have the CD from the book Microsoft® .NET and J2EE Interoperability Toolkit (Microsoft Press), which has a copy of a piece of software called "ja.net" from Intrinsyc Software that promises to fulfill this function, but in order to use it you need to obtain a licence from Intrinsyc and their web site is not responding (perhaps they have gone out of business since the book was published?).

Are there any others I'm not aware of?

Answer 1

No, no such thing (except custom commercial solutions). However, if you are up to an in-house solution, you can:

1. Write your own .NET remoting adapter, which sits between the .NET clients and the Java server.
2. The .NET adapter translates the requests to something known by the Java server (maybe a web service interface, via SOAP) and the same for the responses.

So, the .NET adapter would be something like a pass-through and mapping component, with no actual logic. This way all logic can be in the Java server (which seems to be what you want).

It could take some time to do it, but it depends directly on the number of clients you have and on the number of types of requests and responses.