How do u convert any executable file to a web service

Question

Say i have an executable software...say something like an Optical character resolution software...or something like a dictionary software..which i normally run as an exe file..
now how do i go about writing up java code, which allows me to convert this capability into a web service??
Any opinion/guidance is most welcome.

Answer 1

all right...we can use:
Runtime r=System.getRuntime();
Process p=r.exec("c:\\thatfile.exe something"); //to
load that application...
InuputStream in=new InputStream(p.getInputStream());
i tried that with windows media player...replaced
thatfile.exe withe full path of wmplayer.exe and
something with an mpg file name...
but all i could do was play that file..now what if i
want to change the brightness??
what i mean is..how do i get to know WHAT TO SEND IN
A PROCESS'S INPUT/OUTPUT STREAM ???
lets try a simple example..lets open up the
notepad...and try to save a file as abc.txt with the
content as xyz....how do we do it?With much difficulty.
Which suggests notepad is an excellent example if you really want to do this.
You might look at java.awt.Robot. Not sure it if will work but you can try.
I know autoit (which you can search for on the internet) would work. You would write an autoit script and then use autoit to run the script. The script would take arguments, like "abc.txt" and "xyz.txt", and run notepad making notepad do whatever.
A non-gui app, which notepad obviously isn't, could be controlled by streams (see java.lang.Process)
For the right windows app using a COM interface might be better. At least in my experience figuring out how to get what you want from COM (one you didn't write) is a nightmare. But possible. A 'service' might actually need this because it might not be possible to pop a gui on some server set ups (not sure about this though.) Doing this either requires that you write JNI or find a third party tool that provides this functionality for you.
In all of the above you need to figure out the functionality of the exe, and then write a layer that provides the specific functionality that you need to control.
And of course none of the above has anything to do with web services but rather it is just how to control an executable.