>>So original game plan for all this was separate exe's for batch work at night
>>vs. reporting app. And what you all are telling me is this plan was Out of
>>Process.
>
>Not quite: there's a semantic difference between COM EXEs and separate executables, but I can't quite articulate it....

I know what your getting at it, I can't articulate it well either but I think your reading more into my overly simplified scenario here. Let me try to show you mean:

-First off I'll have a scheduling app I haven't mentioned yet, the users will use this to create a "To Do" list for the overnight data handler app.
-Data handler app will use many different methods and routines to restock/rebuild tables needed for the next day on each overnight run.
-Reporting App will use the finished products from Data Handler to generate output. But it also needs to Verify that the work needed for any given report was done the night before. (in other words, make sure the users scheduled it before they tried to print it)

So now a users picks a report to generate from the Reporting App, first thing it does is Verify that tables needed for that report are up to date. If they are not up to date, then The reporting app needs to make a call to The Data Handler app in order in order to have the Data Handler exe run the processing that should of been done but wasn't scheduled. Isn't that pretty much a cut-n-dried example of an Out Of Process call?