DSXchange

Making the call to the Windows box isn't as much of a problem as getting the results returned to the UNIX box. In this particular case, expecting a long string (of undetermined length) in xml format.

I'm looking for an elegant way to have a DS job on a UNIX box send a signal to an .exe file on a Windows box and get the standard command output returned to the UNIX box.

Unless you are using some other scheduler, you will be limited to the capabilities of the system scheduler, cron in the case of Unix. What scheduler are you using?

Quickest way I can think to determine number of lines (assuming it's a source file) is to write a "Before Job" routine in Basic that counts the number of lines. You might start by looking up READSEQ in the Basic guide.