Does anybody know an answer to this?

I have a large niche application (fuel oil distribution) written in C++ for DOS (i.e. writing directly to the screen), and it has its own ISAM database.

If it could be made to run on the web, it might be successful.

Is that possible? I would be grateful for any pointers in the right direction.

I have a large niche application

<pedantic>
A "niche" cannot be large, as "aniche" is small by the very definition of the word.
</pedantic>

As to whether a console application it could be compiled into an ISAPI app or .NET framework would be difficult to say, without knowing (literaly) the Ins and Outs of the existing app source.

Thanks for the reply, that was more encouraging than I had feared.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

<pederast>
A "niche" cannot be large, as "aniche" is small by the very definition of the word.
</pederast>

You knew perfectly well that I meant "a large niche-application" and not "a large-niche application"! It has 120+ modules.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

As to whether a console application it could be compiled into an ISAPI app or .NET framework would be difficult to say, without knowing (literaly) the Ins and Outs of the existing app source.

It did screen read/write by peek() & poke(). Fortunately, these were all contained in one I/O library, that were called by all the other modules. If it would make it less hard, I think an alternative bios I/O library that I wrote could be resurrected.

My knowledge of ISAPI and .NET is roughly zero. The way I learn best is to start by copying simple examples (like "Hello, World!"), and check that they work, and then progress by tweaking them. Are there sets of free tools, and simple on-line or downloadable tutorials? What facilities would I need to check for in web hosting?

It will definitely need something a little more robust method than "poke()"ing the screen buffer memory for output.

.NET is roughly zero

I'm not much above that, I've always been aggrevated by the constraints of .net that makes programmers become M$ pointyand clicky mouse jockeys!!!!

You knew perfectly well that I meant "a large niche-application" and not "a large-niche application"! It has 120+ modules.

The addition of the hyphen makes a whole world of difference to the context

What facilities would I need to check for in web hosting?

Just windows hosting with ver 200x onwards.
for testing IIS can be setup on XP Pro, Vista Pro & Ultimate, Win7 pro (single site on localhost) and on Win7 Ultimate, host headers can be used to run multiple sites.

Free tools? You could play with VS Express.
Tutorial? MSDN is a wealth of information.

Thanks very much for the effort you took with this reply, Chris.

Can I throw this question open to the floor?

The library I/O was designed in C++ under DOS to write to a 80x40 character screen. It took the parameters x (height), y (width) and c (character to write at x,y).

Can something be done to convert this to run on the web?