Inter-Application Communication on Windows

[FlexibleLearning at aol.com]

After going all round the houses on this one, using files is exactly how  the 
Scripter's Scrapbook IAC API works, with the benefit of being a cross  
platform solution as well.
 
/H


Dave wrote:
> I have an application that periodically creates  or updates an SQLite  
> database (actually there are lots of  databases (separate SQLite  
> files), but only one is worked on at a  time) and then sends the  
> results to the server. This process can  take upwards of 15 minutes to  
> complete. In the meantime I want to  be able to still use the  
> application to do other things (such as  create playlists in iTunes).

Richard Gaskin wrote:
I'd use sockets, or polling for a file.   While polling a file's content 
can eat some cycles, polling for the  existence of a file is pretty darn 
fast.  Given the scenario you  describe, where you're not really 
expecting a result for several minutes,  you could probably get away with 
polling for a file every few seconds.   Cheap, simple, reasonably efficient.