>I have been through a flurry of little projects that implement XML messaging and DOM. In days before we used to argue the merits of this or that project tool based on the ease the tool could communicate with Web Servers.
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>I have come to a conclusion that it no longer matters what GUI tool we use for the desktop, because any of them can now pass or request data from a Web Server.
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>Even Linux/Apache can parse an MS DOM.
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>Is the argument about what's on the desktop over? With XML messaging - does it matter - Does SOAP even matter anymore?

I have been involved in such situations before where the client was providing feedback on various development environment to act as a client for such needs. We had a Web server that we had to collect data from such as you mentioned. Basically, the decision of the development environment was made based on the additional requirements and not related to the XML messaging. Thus, as we needed a lot of data manipulation, VFP was again the selected choice.