Hi Peter.

 PS>> How do I do it? I suppose there has to be some sort of 
 PS>> combination of queues 
 PS>> and pipes. I could use queues to send messages to the 
 PS>> server, like "read the 
 PS>> next 23 bytes", then the server would put the 23 bytes in
a pipe that
 PS>> the 

 DM> How about the queue says, "On pipe \pipe\bbs\node1, give me message #8
 DM> in message area handle 0x12345678," and the message is put in the
 DM> pipe.  If the client reads the first 8 bytes and says,
"Nope," it can
 DM> just flush the pipe.

  You even can use "\\workstation\pipe\bbs\node1", ie share your
station among two or 2000 CPUs ;) And I don't think that sending 2-3 kb of
message is really hard for cpu -- in my case, sending 1.5-2M through pipes
beetween two workstations takes not so much time, including search through
index at server and dropping useless records at client. I use general
protocol

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
client    : connect to "\\server\pipe\db\datafile"
client    : "create new data server for me"
server    : "created new data server named \\server\pipe\db\datafile.25"
server    : hang up
client    : connect to "\\server\pipe\db\datafile.25"

loop:
 client    : "send me records those have sid=1000"
 dataserver: requests mutex and accesses datafile (really,index in RAM)
 dataserver: releases mutex and sending records into pipe
 client    : while(more) get rec; check it; if useless, drop it; else store it;
 goto loop;
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Server is the thread. Data server is the thread too. It being created for
every request to server. After that server forgets about it. The only case
when system blocks is when one of the data servers trying to send whole
datafile. But in that place in protocol I've inserted 
        DosReleaseMutexSem(blocksem);
        DosRequestMutexSem(blocksem);
for every 100 processed records. It gives opportunity for other threads to
get their portion of info.

Such approach, m.b., ugly, but if you divide your bbs into small
independent part, it will much clear for you, and easily to tune and even
rebuild totally.

bye.   [Team OS/2]
dozen

--- FleetStreet 1.19 NR