Thanks Jason for your comment.

I would be very grateful if you could explain [or point me in the direction of] an explanation of how to extract information like the value of a user variable such as ErrorFileRowCount, and how to modify variable values in the same way that I can when I use my method, by using the service broker method. Exactly how much more work would that entail? Would I benefit from expanding on the service broker method as-opposed to creating a WCF service that can manipulate items through ASP.NET code?