Trying to get Bisque to talk to itself

Currently I'm trying to get my local version of Bisque configured so that its "engine server" speaks to its main "server," both of which interact through different ports (27000 and 8080, respectively).  I think the two processes are not communicating.  I tried the simple test of copying the generic "MyData" and "ShExample" modules into the same directory, named "foobar" and "xyzzy."  With quite a bit of cajoling, I got the engine server to recognize foobar but not xyzzy, so that they turn up if one does a GET from localhost:27000/engine_service.  Unfortunately the main server does not even seem to be heeding what its putative engine is providing.  I've made as many intelligent guesses as I can, restarted the servers over and over and over, and even tried quite a few unintelligent guesses in desperation, but nothing is working.  Te documentation is no help, and I'm pretty frustrated.  I could succeed if I had a locally-running Bisque server, but it's a herculean task to get it configured correctly.  I could succeed if I had a locally-running Bisque engine-server that is registered with the one on bovary, but it's impossible to convince anyone with authority to open an external port in the firewall.  There has to be a better way.