leave prog running on server???

[pgrimes]

A lot of you have probably seen my posts recently on how I can get my prog to open from asp or dll or something. That doesn't seem to be working for me.

Tell me if this is a real bad idea or not.

I was thinking of having my program stay running constantly on the server. I can put it into a loop, constantly checking to see if a file exists... if the file does exist, it will read in the first line (which, will be the pathname for a variable my prog uses) and do the stuff it needs to do, then delete the file. Whenever somebody clicks a certain thing on the web, the asp will create the file again, and write the pathname in it. etc. It's pretty simple, and I have it so it works, just wondering about system resources and stuff.

bad idea or no?

thanks,

Paul

[Hack]

The only true way of knowing what system resources will be used up is to try for a while, and keep monitoring the server. There are lots of people who keep programs running constantly on servers. Whether it is a good idea or a bad idea depends a lot on the horsepower of your server and the dictates of your situation.

[pgrimes]

does this code look ok? or is ther something better you can think of?

Private Sub Form_Load()
Dim strPathToFile As String
Dim cptPath As String
 
strPathToFile = "C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\cpthandler\simpleTest\filePath.txt"
 
Do While Exists(strPathToFile)
 
If Exists(strPathToFile) = True Then
 
 Open strPathToFile For Input As #1
 
 Line Input #1, cptPath
 
    MsgBox (cptPath)
    'My app code will be here instead of msgbox
    
 Close #1
 Kill (strPathToFile)
 
Else
 
  Sleep (500)
  
 
End If
 
If Exists("C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\stop\stop.txt")
 End
End If
 
Loop
 
End
 
End Sub

[pgrimes]

whadda ya think?