I've got a scenario where we have a customer who has a linux hosted php app (joomla) that they wish to integrate with some back-end asp.net mvc functionality that was created for a 'sister' site. Basically, the mvc site has prices and stock availability methods which (in the sister site) populates dropdown lists and other 'order' style info on the pages. I've been tasked with looking at the integration options to allow the php site to use this info as a 'service'. (as ever, these guys are looking at cost of ownership, maintenence etc, so this is their preferred route) 

Has anyone done anything similar with success?? I'd imagine (much like the sister site) liberal doses of ajax will be employed in order to populate portions of the page on demand. So this may have a bearing on any suggestions that you may have. Also, the methods that are being called ultimately end up populating the same database, so there are no issues with correlating the ID's across the different platforms.

I don't really want to go down any 'iframe' type route if at all possible, tho' reality may dictate this as being an option. I'm possibly (naively) imagining that i could simply invoke the mvc functions directly from the php app with some sort of 'session' variable being passed for authentication.

pretty tall order or pretty straightfwd??

cheers

jim

**[edit]** - tho highly unlikely to be implemented due to the existing structure of the joomla site, would the use of an openID account help to 'glue' the two sites together??

also, found this little article that 'may' go some way twds what I'm thinking of:
<http://www.jeffancel.com/archive/2009/04/05/70.aspx>