I am trying to set up a communication system that will allow a manager to specify a series of emails/text to be sent to a group of individuals. I plan to log these requests in a database from the application front end. I have this working

So now I have a database with this set of tasks that need to be processed at different times. What is the best way of doing this?

I was thinking I should set up a background process that would regularly check (every 15 minutes) the database and process any task that needs to be completed.

A similar question was addressed here: http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...ground+process

where Gary (gep13) suggested " A better solution, if you have the option, would be to create something like a scheduled task to hit a Web Service, or a Windows Service, to process all the jobs, when there are some in the queue."

I have never dealt with a web service or windows service, so I am not sure what to do with this suggestion. Any pointers would be much appreciated.