Randall,
one more suggestion. In my app I am running the extra EXE at the server to gather order status data into a table. It runs off a timer set to 2 minutes.

There is a grid on the main screen of the user program to display it. A timer on the main form simply does a refresh() of the main form every 2 minutes updating the grid. Thus the heavy lifting is done by a big SQL in the seperate EXE but all users see the results. Note that the main form is in a private data session so that no other process is affected.

With each timer set at 2 minutes the data the user sees is at the most 4 minutes old. You can adjust the timers as needed. I didn't even try to sync the timers. No need.

In your case you might have to run the extra EXE on each station. To make sure it extra EXE is running place the

RUN myupdt.EXE /N

somewhere at the start of your main program.

HTH
John.