VB Socket to Java Socket

[Mark Reyes]

Hello Guys,

Good Day..

I have this trivial question to ask, we are developing programs that interacts with machines.
According to the vendor, machine is opening server socket that we can poll to ask for machine parameters. The socket is a VB(Visual Basic) socket.

My question is, is it possible for me to develop a client socket written in java that could communicate with the VB socket? Since I know what port is opened on the machine, I was thinking if I could create a client socket that listens to that port also.

I am familiar with creating a VB client socket, but I want to explore the possibility of doing it, the java way.

Thanks..

[Paul Clapham]

Sure it is. It doesn't matter what language the server is written in, all you need to know is the protocol that the server implements and you can connect to it from Java code.

[Mark Reyes]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply.

all you need to know is the protocol that the server implements

Just want to ask, by protocol, do you mean how the machine serversocket is sending the messages to the client listening to its port and how to particularly parse or interpret the message.

Thanks again.. my question isn't trivial anymore..

[Ulf Dittmer]

Yes, that's meant by protocol. It doesn't sound as if the server could use a pre-existing protocol for which you can look up the spec at the IETF, so you'll need to get a description from the folks who run the server.

One thing to keep in mind is that Windows and Java use a different kind of byte ordering (little-endian vs. big-endian), so you may need to swap the bytes of any 2-byte or 4-byte data types you send and receive.

[Mark Reyes]

Hi Ulf,

Thanks for your confirmation.

One thing to keep in mind is that Windows and Java use a different kind of byte ordering (little-endian vs. big-endian), so you may need to swap the bytes of any 2-byte or 4-byte data types you send and receive.

I dont know this yet for now. But I will ask javaranch again when I encounter some problem. You bet.