I am also thinking about network messaging (UDP to be precise). There is an excellent example here... I wouldn't be able to do what you did (checking with a timer), because what I am trying to do is reports, where the user would be waiting for a response. What about speed though? Did you find a way to isolate the network traffic between the server and the dedicated machine? I guess you could start by puting 100 MB network cards, but the traffic would still go all over the place. Ideally I would want to share the drive between the server and the dedicated machine. I wonder if anybody ever invented anything like that... Maybe a PCI bridge that would bridge the buses of the two machines, making it faster than a network card...



>I wasted a week or so on DCOM, decided that it was too involved ( security!! ) to use in a non professional client installation where they would never be able to add new users!
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>Instead, I use a dedicated machine that does the work behind the scenes ( merges data, calculates prices, etc ) in an endless loop . The data remains on the server.
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>Some tasks are routine, others are data driven ( put a record in the request file saying "reprice order 101" , etc )
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>Simple, I also use a sleep command to give good keyboard response on the data cruncher!
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>Mike