I have a pretty general question here. What is the best + reliable way for two applications running on the same machine to communicate with each other WITHOUT using web services or a web server of any kind.

as example:

application A: runs at .NET app that with active X controls can access another third party application and receive data.

application B: (lets assume is running java) wants to be able to start a process in application A with specific parameters and receive information back from application A. (no web services allowed)

the only thing I can think of is perhaps application B executing a file with certain parameters...then application A does any work and writes any return information into a database...but I don't know how reliable this is...or how application A would know when the data has been written to the database. (plus this sounds like a bit of a hackish solution to me..and was wondering is there anything better out there)

alright...thanks for any help!..

Andrew