I have designed an ASP application which messages many users after certain data is uploaded by other users. The messaging could take some time, so I want to run it as a background process. There is no output to any user needed after the original user triggers the process, so I want to free this user. Therefore I need soem program to run in the background. ASP.Net has a thread class which could be used to start a new server thread and close the client thread, but now I have decided to use SQL Server triggers to call a C# executable which will take care of the messaging. I have two questions: Firstly, how can I call an executable from ASP which will run as a background process? (ie return nothing and allow ASP screen page to finish). Does wscript.shell allow control back to ASP while the program it calls is executing? Secondly, with the webpage used as a trigger written in ASP, I was trying to use server.transfer to transfer program control from as .asp to an .aspx page, where I would use the thread class, but this is not possible. So I tried to use response.redirect, but I cannot sort out the 'ASP 0156 : 80004005' headers problem, even with response.buffer or response.clear - I do not want to redesign my code, it is complicated and would take weeks to redesign. If I can't use wscript.shell to run processes in the background, I will use SQL Server triggers. Any advice? Please do not ask for code... (all very straightforward really). Thanks.

I mean I have not yet written the code for the background process, but I just want to trigger it as effectively as possible. (Time = money)!