John W. Colby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Aug 23 08:58:40 CDT 2005
Yes, that is the gist of it. I have a functioning service that ATM just fires a timer every N seconds. I am developing another program that loads the table of events needing to be run into classes. Originally this program will have a form with a timer that causes the events to be examined to see if it is time to run one of them. I load each event from the table into a class simply so that I can not hit the disk every timer tick. So this program watches the events in the loaded class instances. When it is time to run, it will open a program and feed it command line parameters. ATM the program being opened is an Access program that sends the reports out to the client Insurance company. Access will open, send the reports, log them sent, mark the records as sent and shut back down. I was (am still) doing all of this in Access, but I want a service to run to do the trigger part. I will in fact eventually port this whole thing into VB.Net. This is a perfect application of .Net since the process is really pulling data, building CSV and "fixed width" TXT files with specific names in specific locations on the disk, then attaching them to emails and / or FTPing the files out to the client Insurance company. Access handles this OK but since the Access GUI isn't needed at all, having it all in VB.Net really just makes sense - assuming that I can get the Email and FTP parts happening. It turns out that .Net does not have that stuff built in yet, you have to find and learn third party code, not to mention things like how SMPT works etc. Outlook "just did it" for me for that part. Anyway, I am working on the port for this stuff, working from the service outwards. I really think I will keep an "interface" in the system, where the scheduler is (eventually, once debugged) embedded right in the service, and the reporting code is a standalone program just opened by the scheduler. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: http://folding.stanford.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-vb-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 9:06 AM To: dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com Subject: RE: [dba-VB] VB.Net - Hook an open program Let me see if I understand what you are talking about. You have a Service that is really going to be the 'scheduler', because it is going to run the tasks (from the database) when you need them. However, you want to create a GUI to interact with that service (which you are probably running under specific credentials, so it can't interact with the desktop.) If that is the case, again, Winsocks. Drew -----Original Message----- From: John W. Colby [mailto:jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 10:06 PM To: dba-vb at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [dba-VB] VB.Net - Hook an open program I want to load an application that loads scheduled tasks into classes from a database. Once the tasks are loaded I want my service to call this application and ask it to run any tasks that the scheduler deems ready to run. Is it possible for one program to call another open (running) program? I would like the scheduler to be part of the service but until the system is debugged I want the scheduler to be a program with a user interface that I can watch. For this reason, the service would cause the scheduler to load, and then periodically "call" the scheduler and ask it to check its list of tasks and run any as appropriate. Is this possible? John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: http://folding.stanford.edu/ _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ dba-VB mailing list dba-VB at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-vb http://www.databaseadvisors.com