Chad,

How about performing the data manipulations in SQL Server stored procedures or in a Windows Service (VB.NET or C#.NET)? That solves a lot of the problems.

Also, I would look first to CLR stored procedures than extended stored procedures. Exended Stored procedures are on the way out.

>Keith,
>
>Thanks for the warnings. Do you have a better idea? I have a couple of classes in VFP that manipulate SQL Server data. The process can be an unknown length (just depends on how much data is loaded into the job) and is very CPU intensive (a lot of loops). We have users at the warehouse that will need to kick off jobs. We also have local users who would like to be able to kick off the jobs so that a Job Server does the processing instead of the local machine. We have a server dedicated to running jobs like this and nightly processes and such. One idea is to have a timer app running that simply polls a table every minute or so looking for new records. When it finds one, it calls a VFP exe that processes that row. I'm not too crazy about that idea because it could be a LOT of unnecessary checking. Another idea is to have an INSERT TRIGGER that calls an extended stored procedure that launches the VFP exe. I've not done that before so I don't know what kind of headaches go along with it.
>Another way I thought about was the web service deal. The second two methods allow the process to be launched on demand.
>
>Your thoughts?
>Chad
>
>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>I have a VFP exe that runs a process (it doesn't have any UI). I need this exe to reside on a server and run in the servers memory space, using the server's processing power. Multiple copies of this exe could be running at any given time processing different records in some tables. Can I create a web service that will add the necessary data to some tables, then launch the exe (in its own process) and return (without waiting on the exe)? What kind of security issues will this pose (running the exe, that is)? This will be on an intranet server with no outside access. Is there a better way to remotely launch an exe on demand?
>>>
>>>TIA,
>>>Chad
>>
>>Chad,
>>
>>It's better to wrap the VFP application as a Windows Service. With a Windows Service, you have more control over CPU utilization and error reporting (via the Event Log).
>>
>>Now that I think a moment about it, launching various background VFP applications on a server is a really bad idea. The processes could potentially consume 100% of the server's resources. Once this happens, your only option is to jump in a car and perform a hard-reboot of the server.