Switching back and forth between GTKMM application and Windows application

["Jeffrey S. Gavin" <jeff ezclick net>]

Greetings everyone,

Summary: I am trying to determine how to quickly integrate a legacy 
Windows application and a newly developed GTKMM application.

I've been developing this GTKMM application for the last 2 years.  It is 
a medication administration package for use in Nursing homes.  You can 
view our web site at http://www.exact-med.com.

We are installing our system soon and our customer has an existing 
medical records system that we are integrating with.  We are sharing 
data via the network using a protocol developed for the medical industry 
(http://www.hl7.org).

Sharing data between the two systems is easy, but our customer is 
replacing/supplementing a piece of their legacy medical records system 
(MRS) with our system, and a portion of their legacy system will replace 
some functionality in our system.  Our system is called eMAR (electronic 
Medication Administration Record), and it tracks the administration of 
medications to patients.  Their legacy system will continue to be the 
master system for the majority of the Patient Information, but our eMAR 
system will become the master system for just the medication orders for 
the patient.

So, we, the developers of the two systems, have been asked by our 
customer who wants to use BOTH systems to do the following:

'Seamlessly' integrate eMAR and the legacy MRS.  The majority of patient 
information will still be maintained in the legacy MRS, but now when the 
medical records data entry person begins to enter a new medication order 
for a patient, then the system will _switch_ to eMAR.  Likewise, when 
the user tries to modify/view other patient information, the system will 
_switch_ back to the legacy MRS.

The legacy MRS is written for MS Windows.  The eMAR system is written in 
GTKMM for Linux.  I've been mulling this over for the last couple of 
days and have a few ideas which I'll state briefly:

1. Run eMAR on the Linux box via an X-Windows client on the MS windows 
box.  Use some sort of communication mechanism (DCOM/CORBA) to tie the 
two systems together.
2. Compile eMAR for MS Windows using GTKMM for windows and tie the two 
systems together using some sort of interprocess communications.
3. Compile the legacy MRS (a Delphi coded system I believe) on Linux and 
run both applications on Linux.

Has anyone ever seen this done?  Is there an example of this out there?  
I have come to learn that most people (myself included) consider 
themselves exclusively Linux or exclusively Windows developers.

I'm leaning toward option 1 because it has more 'knowns' for me.  I know 
how to run my application on a Windows box via an X-Windows client.  If 
I can learn how to communicate via CORBA or DCOM with the windows 
application, then I think I can quickly demonstrate some basic 
"application switching" to my customer in just a few days.

Option 2 scares me.  I have designed our system to run on Linux, I know 
that getting it to run on Windows will take significant effort.  I'm 
cannot use the latest version of GTKMM (currently using gtkmm-2.2.1) 
because of some specific interdependencies.

Option 3 would be great for me, but I can't make that call.  My vendor 
partner has not made that offer to compile on Linux, and I have not 
asked them to.  I suspect it is scary for them as well for the same 
reasons it is scary for me and Option 2.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.  And thank you for making 
suggestions.  I don't understand why my customer thinks it will be so 
difficult to simply <ALT>-<TAB> between the two applications, but they 
are insisting on having the two systems switch automatically.  I'm going 
to continue look for a simple solution.

Regards,

Jeff