>I am writing an application in VFP9 that needs to interface with a utility provided by another company. This utility was written in Java. They were concerned that VFP would not be able to interface with it. [..] Does anybody have any ideas what could be done?
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>I don't think there is an ideal answer..
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>Is your VFP application the client/host, and the required interactions stateless and modal? If so, you could wrap the Java classes into a command-line program and call it from VFP using Windows Scripting Host. (or RUN/! if you have to).
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>Alternatively, or if the interactions are not stateless, then another way of doing it is create a web server (Apache/JSP) that exposes the Java utility as a web service, and use an XmlHttp COM control from VFP to interact with it.
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>- Colin

Colin,

thanks for the quick response.

I don't like the WSH answer or RUN. As for the web service, would I be able to create a web server exposing the java utility as a web service without the vendors input (will the web service just be a wrapper around their utility)? Or is that something the vendor will have to do.

If we do get the web service to work, how difficult is it to get a web service to run on a standalone (non networked and non internet connected) PC?

I do have alternatives that appear to work well with VFP so if this is too difficult to do I will go with the other options.

Thanks again,