It sounds to me as if you've just started...
> I want to make it
>so that participants in our buy/sell network can stream us updates (i.e.
>list new products or tell us that other things they had listed have been
>sold). I want to do this w/XML. My question is, should I hang a socket off
>my program that is waiting for XML to be streamed to it or should I make it
>so that I have a server-based mailbox that XML files are sent to? What have
>other people done for this kind of application?
Suggest you look at message queuing technology ( www.messageQ.com ). We are
using Microsoft's MSMQ for this purpose, others use IBM's MQSeries.
Mike Kay