Designing A Process and Report Scheduler/Spooler Application

[Ben Kim]

Hello all,

Prior to our days with .NET (yesterday - grin), we could LoadLibrary any
application DLL and call a function/procedure. If we stored our Class
DLL's in the GAC (since we are designing multiple application executables
that could call common DLL's), is there a similar function in VB.NET that we
can dynamically call / load a DLL and call a method from the resource?

For example (pseudo code):

MyProcesses.DLL
ProcessItemHistory
ProcessTotalSales

MyReports.DLL
PrintItemHistory
PrintTotalSales

MyScheduler.EXE (Run on any machine)
Loop
Find next scheduled job
If no jobs found, break and sleep until next timer event
Am I the preferred server? Has the "preferred" time expired? No ->
Cycle
Call up the corresponding DLL
Thread execute the procedure/method using the properties
(parameters) set by the user when creating the job
Mark job as started (the called procedure will remove it from the
queue when completed)
Have we exceeded or at the user defined maximum number of threads?
Yes -> Break
Sleep for a while (give the OS time to startup and run the thread)
End

I assume it is possible with VB.NET but need to be pointed in the right
direction. These class DLL's cannot be "referenced" at compile time. For
those of you that worked on IBM System 3x/400 systems you will know what I
am speaking of (IE: Job/Work Q). Doable?

Thanks!

Ben Kim
Emergitech

[m.posseth]

Investigate Reflection

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...onOverview.asp

regards

Michel Posseth [MCP]
"Ben Kim" <bk**@NOSPAMemergitech.com> wrote in message
news:eM**************@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...

Hello all,

Prior to our days with .NET (yesterday - grin), we could LoadLibrary any
application DLL and call a function/procedure. If we stored our Class
DLL's in the GAC (since we are designing multiple application executables
that could call common DLL's), is there a similar function in VB.NET that
we can dynamically call / load a DLL and call a method from the resource?

For example (pseudo code):

MyProcesses.DLL
ProcessItemHistory
ProcessTotalSales

MyReports.DLL
PrintItemHistory
PrintTotalSales

MyScheduler.EXE (Run on any machine)
Loop
Find next scheduled job
If no jobs found, break and sleep until next timer event
Am I the preferred server? Has the "preferred" time expired?
No -> Cycle
Call up the corresponding DLL
Thread execute the procedure/method using the properties
(parameters) set by the user when creating the job
Mark job as started (the called procedure will remove it from the
queue when completed)
Have we exceeded or at the user defined maximum number of threads?
Yes -> Break
Sleep for a while (give the OS time to startup and run the thread)
End

I assume it is possible with VB.NET but need to be pointed in the right
direction. These class DLL's cannot be "referenced" at compile time. For
those of you that worked on IBM System 3x/400 systems you will know what I
am speaking of (IE: Job/Work Q). Doable?

Thanks!

Ben Kim
Emergitech