>Hi Jay,
>
>>Never worked with COM servers before. Will I be able to include and reference their functionality/properties from my VFP8 form or code?
>
>In your case a COM DLL would most likely be a better approach than a COM EXE server. With a COM object, you can pass around references to your form, the form can call methods on the COM server, the COM server can call back to the form. As far as object access is concerned, COM objects a quite transparent.
>
>What the COM server cannot do is access any of the variables and tables directly. Whether or not a COM server approach works for you therefore depends widely on how much data you need to pass around and how many calls you make to the COM server.

I'm using the MSWinsock OLE which utilizes the _GDIPlus class (VFP9 FFC directory) to receive/send message data via ports to an external 3rd-party application. The nature of the process is that it could send a message every few seconds, and then receive an acknowledgement back from the external application. I currently use this OLE/class to receive messages from another external client, then send an acknowledgement back. This was written in VFP9 as a service because of the specific _GDIPlus class required. Now, to send the information from the main application, written in VFP8, I am trying to figure out the best way to do that as I do not have direct access to the VFP9 _GDIPlus class from within VFP8. Am I on the right track with using a COM containing the OLE/class to handle this?