leave prog running on server???

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

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.

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

VB Code:

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

whadda ya think?