XNA based frontend for simulation server

[herbert]

I am a newbie to XNA with seven years .NET experience.
I wrote a factory/shop floor simulation for which I need a graphical UI for
visualization of material movements.

My simulator either raises .NET events and/or writes those events into a log
file with a timestamp and an ID for the type of movement.

The UI should either react upon the events or interprete the log file and
play pre-defined movements on the screen.

I think either Silverlight or XNA is the way to go.

With XNA, where in the code does the event handler go and how does it feed
the compute loop?
or where to I read the log file and wait between consecutive records?

It looks to me as I need a dedicated thread in the XNA app which
reads/receives data from the simulation and feeds it into XNA's compute loop.

or do I have to use the XNA network API to talk to another software layer?

is there a better way?

thank you very much. Herbert