in reply to Cron or running process?
If you run it from cron, just be sure to have "safety catches" (only way I can think to say it). I've faced this problem in the past also, went with cron, which works fine accept on that one in a thousand runs chance that the cron job hangs for some reason, which results over time in multiple copies of the same job running...bah, you know what I mean I hope :) Especially since you mentioned DB and email connections, which means your relying on returns from them to be timely.
"I have never written bad code. There are merely unanticipated features."
"I have never written bad code. There are merely unanticipated features."
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