>VFP automation servers are not compatible with MTS. Before going into the specifics of your post, I would suggest attempting to compile your app under VFP 6.
>
>That said, why are you using MTS??? What services of MTS do you require. FWIW, VPF servers do not scale well - and I am talking about 6.0 servers here - under MTS.

John,

I need the VFP servers to run in the context of the NT Server ADMINISTRATOR account (for various reasons including accessing files via NTFS, using WINFAX API, network printing, etc, etc). Normally DLLs run inside IIS and take on the security equivalences of IUSER_. This is not good enough.

With an .EXE based VFP server, it should have been possible to use DCOMCNFG and have the .EXE log-on as any NT user account thereby giving me what I need. However, when I moved to IIS4 I could not (even modifying the meta-base) get .EXE based servers to instantiate from an .ASP page - I had all the docs and suggestions but could not get past the fact that the .EXE would not fire up. I wasted a lot of time trying various things but it would not play ball.

So, I reverted to DLLs (which are faster than .EXE) and used a feature of MTS which enables packages to assume security roles via NT user accounts (default is IWAM_). An additional benefit of doing this is that you can UNLOAD .DLL based servers by simply clicking on a command button - making putting new builds of the DLL on to the web server without having to shut it down, etc.

When I said I use MTS, I mean that I'm running the ASP applications in their own memory space (check box in ms mangement console dialog box). This automatically creates packages in MTS for each ASP virtual root. I am not using transactions or anything like that. Your statement that VFP 5 is not compatible with MTS is in my experience not so (have MS publicly states that VFP 5 does not get on with MTS in a limited way?). Everything works just fine. I am convinced that SYS(3050) is the problem, not anything else.

I was not lucky enough to be able to attend DEVCON (I live and work on a different continent!), and don't have access to VFP 6 beta and even if I did, I wouldn't be running production-wise on a beta - when VFP6 is released in September (later in the UK most likely), we'll go for it no doubt but until then I'm afraid there is no other option for me.

-Alastair