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I'm trying to find a suitable development platform to implement a client side GUI to a fairly elaborate multi platform (Linux/Windows/HP-UX) server implemented in C++.

Originally, the server was a Windows Service with a COM interface. We implemented an IIS/ASP web that provided a thin client front end to our server application. We also implemented some utilities in Visual Basic to talk to the server via DCOM.

In the meantime, we have modified the server so that it also runs as a Unix daemon. We now have to address the front end issue as IIS/ASP, COM/DCOM nor Visual Basic are no longer feasible options. Alternatives that spring to mind are JSP, Java, SOAP, CORBA, multi platform GUI's like QT or a combination of these.

I'm particularly interested in QT because it is C++ and therefore, we should be able to use the same class framework on both client and server side (perhaps with the help of SOAP). Before I delve into this area in order to assess the implications of such an implementation, I'd love to hear any comments from any other QT users who have some experience with similar projects.

Many thanks in advance!

So do you think distributed computing techniques such as CORBA, SOAP or XMLRPC are of no benefit to QT applications as internal mechanisms provide the same (or even better) means?

My server maintains a repository of objects and clients are expected to connect to individual objects in the repository. I don't want the client to obtain a copy of an object of interest.

QSocket and QDataStream sounds like a mechanism to transport data over TCP/IP between server and client, but transporting raw data is only a small aspect of CORBA and certainly doesn't address RPC.