Multiple Applications in CodeIgniter and Expression Engine running together

[eluser]Brian Loomis[/eluser]
We are looking at building an application that utilizes both CI and EE. Essentially, we are trying to open multiple private chat channels on a page, specific to the access levels of each user. Similar to a customer service portal where one representative will have access to multiple chat sessions. Additionally there will be comments added to the chat session for reference. We have concerns about running the comet under the same site as EE as described in the perplexedlabs blog: http://blog.perplexedlabs.com/2009/05/0 … g-polling/

We found these threads, that talk about developing EE/CI applications:

http://expressionengine.com/archived_fo … ad/160256/

http://expressionengine.com/archived_fo … ad/140002/

http://codeigniter.com/wiki/Multiple_Applications/

We want to leverage EE's CMS capabilities to manage content and member groups (and member group access). The CI application will take advantage of long polling (comet) servers using jQuery activation. It will allow pages to be updated automatically based on subscription to service channels running under the comet. The CI app will need to recognize the member group access that is setup in EE and be able to parlay that into the channel access provided by comet - sending and receiving channels (not EE weblogs).

We are looking at a couple of approaches for this project:

1) Developing the CI app as standalone, and we go directly to the database to retrieve member group permissions. Circumventing EE and not utilizing EE tags/templates.

Or

2) Developing the CI as a module or plugin in EE so we utilize the EE tags in the templates to call up the specific service channel.

Or

3) Suggestions? Alternative approaches you have thought about or developed?