[DUG] Program design question

[John Bird]

A program design question: whether to put extra functionality into one
program or several.

I have written a monitor program (automated time recording).  Ideally I want
it as slim as possible since its running all the time.  Hence my idea is to
have one small 1-form program, and when I click on any of the report or
setup buttons, it actually fires up a separate and much larger program using
shellexecute, and suspends itself (closes the logfile) while the other
program runs.

Question 1 - what is the best way for two separate programs to exchange
information - the monitor program needs to be told when the setup program
finishes in order to start running again, and also there is some other
information such as setup options I need to communicate back and forth (eg
which program and/or form fired up the setup program so it can give it focus
again at the end).  Now I can write this information in a disk data file,
but I reckon there has in Windows to be a better way to do it - using some
kind of message.  Or is the simplest to use parameter strings in the
comandline when starting the second program?

Question 2 - if I put all code in one program and don't create the extra
forms/Windows till needed, I am pretty sure I still will have a much bigger
program than option 1.  Any comments?


John Bird
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