Sana,

This question is so generic that I think that it is very difficult to give you a satisfactory answer.

A great deal depends on the context.

If this is to be used in a safety critical application then great care must be exercised in ensuring that the contents of the database, which are used to prepare the input to this 'second program' are legitimate and correct. This means having some model that the data must conform to. How complex should this model be? (is it sufficient to check that dates have the right format, or do data-based data have to conform to some temporal pattern?)

etc.

Similarly, security problems must be addressed - what stops other programs from launching this 'second program'? Is there a handshaking protocol first? Are the data to be encrypted in transit to this second program? if so, how robustly? Are the data to be stored in any fashion? Are the data allowed to be human-readable? If so, who has access and how do you limit it?

Almost any modern language will be able to perform the tasks necessary - what you have to first resolve are the questions surrounding this operation. And nobody will be better placed to answer that then the user of the system, their manager, and any regulatory board that may oversee the use of that program suite.

Dear James, Thanks for your interest. First part of your answer is relevent but this can be incorporated in the database itself, security is not issue at the moment but human readable data is allowed. Moreover, I just want to develop this interface for reducing computation time and effort,as otherwise I will have to run this 2nd program say 1000 times manually, which is not feasible. I want this interface program to run the second program automatically for each record in the database. The database can be a simple ms access database, the 2nd program is in fortran so requires formated input.

Sana,

As you have an Access database, I'm tempted to suggest C# or even VBA (!) as appropriate languages for the 'first program'.

Both have the ability to invoke another executable, such as a FORTRAN .EXE.

If you wish to use C++ and wxWidgets,

As an example that prepares some input files and runs FORTRAN from C++ you can see my codes on github

https://github.com/canbula/FFT

Also an example to how you connect a sqlite file you can see this header file for relevant function definitions

https://github.com/canbula/KaynakcaYonetimi/blob/master/src/wxlibs.h

Good luck

Sana, Look at using Perl with DBI (DataBase Interface). This will allow you to access the database and rewrite the data in the format you want - quite easily. You can even launch the Fortran program from within the Perl script if you so desire.

Perl also has the advantage of being a 'scripting' language - meaning you don't compile it - just edit the text file with the code and run it.

Dear Sana,

Beside the excellent choices above, this can also be made using Matleb with effort depending on the length (or details) of the input file. In one of my own PhD thesis's jobs I had to automatically extract data from EXFOR library and construct an input file, then run a second program that uses the input file. The procedure goes as:

1. Read the database into a matrix, say R=(m-by-n). There are Matlab commands that can read regular BD types.

2. Write each of the elements of the matrix R in a proper input file. The command fwrite is a good choice.

3. If you have to construct multiple input files, then use Matlab text manipulation commands to store them with different names after each time you read data from the DB.

then the main program can take control and run on all input files. Alternatively, one may think of using (input file making - running main program) multiple times; but usually this takes a longer runtime.

Regards,

If SQLServer is an option then it is possible to build SSIS packages for transformation into a flat file and then invoke an external application http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms141166.aspx

Python. Period. I've constructed my own platform to do just this sort of thing for watershed modeling.

If the DB is in Access or Excel, so it is very easy to program what you want in VBA.

If you want, I can help you doing so.