Obtaining data from external programs

Hello, I'm just starting to learn PHP 4 and I had a question that I can't seem to locate an answer for through the resources I have... I'm running on Solaris 2.6 and my problem is I need to access some third-party shared library functions in order to get some data out to be displayed on the web browser. My first thought was just to write a simple CGI program that encapsulated the shared lib then just spit out its own HTML. But I want the flexibility of the scripting and there is some other cool PHP functionality that I want to use (or don't want to reinvent). So I wondering if it is possible to access a SUN shared lib directly from a PHP script? If not, what would maybe be an alternative? Write a small wrapper program that pull out the values I wanted then have PHP execute the program? But how could I get the data back into the script? Possibly through file i/o but the exec / file write, read and delete sounds kinda expensive? Thanks for any help, - Rudy. -------------------------- Raul "Rudy" Aceves Ventana Group Email: raceves@vengrp.com Phone: (530) 846-6640 Fax: (530) 846-6612