Calling DLL from Flex app

Hi,

We have a VB6 app which is connecting to the scanner to retrieve the images from the scanner
via DLL (written in C++).
I am trying to rewrite that VB application using Flex.
It has to work in both online and offline (disconnected) mode.
Other parts of that large application are written in Java/J2EE (Spring, JSF, JSP, etc),
so I would probably need to have that AIR app connecting to JSP or JSF anyway.

From what I have seen so far there is no way to connect to DLL directly from Flex.
Could you suggest a workaround ? Any sample code ?

The other concern is that it has to work in connected and disconnected mode
(remote and local DB).

Please advise.

Thank you,
Oleg
olegkon@yahoo.com