NYCPHP Meetup

[Faber Fedor]

I need some extra brains for a design I'm doing.  Since it's going to
involve XML-RPC and PHP, I figured I'd ask here.

I'm putting together a basic shopping cart.  I can't use existing
solutions because the back end database is called jBASE (a variant of
PICK). jBASE lives on the Production Server behind a LinkSys
firewall/router.  The web site sits on the Web Server and is outside of
the firewall. The plan so far is: user submits a request (places an
order, wants to see Product ID# 1234, etc.) to the Web Server.  The Web
Server does some PHP magic and sends the request to the Production
Server via XML-RPC.  The Production Server does some (PHP?) magic and hands
the request to the database via CGI calls. When the Production Server
responds, the process is reversed.

I don't know how to do the XML-RPC magic above, but tht's part of the
fun of the project.  What I Can't figure out is how to securely transfer
the data between the two servers. I need a secure connection from the
Web Server, through the firewall to the Production Server that can't be
cracked by script kiddies and the like. I tried setting up a VPN tunnel
using FreeS/WAN And Openswan and I can't get them working after a week,
so it's time to try something else.

The client insists that this be done in real-time, so I can't have a
copy of the database on the web server.

Any ideas?

-- 
 
Regards,
 
Faber                     

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