But I do need to run the processes at the same time. The calls are to programs that pull certain data as selected by the user. Think of it like asking a user which reports to pull. Each sub-program generates their own report. Yeah, it could be done sequentally, but the time for that to happen is too long for the needs of this application. I'm thinking that I should be able to speed this up to run 6 reports in < 6-7 seconds. At least, that is the immediate goal.

Also, I am investigating possible code-efficiency-issues within the individual programs, but this will be the next step once that is finished.