Passing variables to a different server

[gotmick]

I have a form page on a public webserver that needs to send queries to a different internal server on our network, and have the results sent back to our public server. The internal server is an AS400 i5 running Zend Core php and querying a DB2 database. Making this server public is not an option.

I'm able to pass the variables to the internal server (by POST on the form), then make the query okay, I'm just stuck on passing those new variables back to the public server. When starting this, I assumed starting a session would work, but it's not. Unless I'm doing something wrong.

I know I could pass these in the URL but there is too much info and I would rather keep it hidden anyway.

What am I missing? Can someone help point me in the right direction?

[iamthwee]

encrypt it?

[gotmick]

encrypt it?

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Both servers are on the same local network, so I wouldn't need to encrypt it. I just need to use the internal server to make the query and send the results back to our server with a public IP. Does that make sense?

[ryan_vietnow]

Xml?

[w_3rabi]

u can put a page on the local server
which takes the request and prints out the result
the from your code u can call that page
through CURL request
and handle the output

[gotmick]

Using SOAP functions was the solution to my problem - thanks for your suggestions.

[martin5211]

xml post using fputs() and SimpleXML functions or XML to array class is another good and simpler method for great amount of data like rss, news, etc.