I have made a script that takes the stock market .xml file every 5 min, converts it to the correct form and organizes it into excel. Another script that I made takes the database and predicts the stock market by merely figuring out the average trend of the stock from past data where the stock underwent similar trends.
So far, for simplicity, these run in the foreground by putting the data into excel and automatically manipulating the data there. Using Excel is the direct opposite of running in the background, but the data is immediately accessible.
Do any of you know a good method/file type that will enable the script to run in the background and still allow the database to be quickly/reasonably accessible by the prediction program?

Also, from what I have read, prediction programs are not illegal, right? I don't use these scripts for gaming yet, but I plan to once I get a final version. At which point I'll post them so they can be looked over, etc.. Maybe I can even put em on a server for all to use.

-quantumatt

Pretty late response, but you can use a cron function instead of applescript. Although, if you have OSX it's different now and I haven't had the need to learn the new way of doing things, but basically cron is out. If you do a little research though (try macnn for mac help) its definitely possible.