Thanks Anduril462,
I will take a look at what sockets are and if they can reasonably be used to do what I am wanting to do. If you have any good resource sites I can look-up I would be all ears. If I understand correctly by your response I could very easily write the back-end in C and the front end in whatever (java, html, c++) and use "sockets" to speak back and forth from one app to the next app. I will read up on sockets and see if the sockets are used inside each application (gui and main/control) or if it is more of a layer in between. If they are call in the apps themselves then I am guessing their is an API for C (the backend) and/or any other language (the frontend) so would just implement the comms between the two applications in each application respectively. Thanks again.