>$1,000 to the first person who is able to help me get a VFP created web service up and running. Please ask any questions you want. I will pick the person if more than one offers help. THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

Larry I think you're overcomplicating your problem significantly here.

It also depends on whether you need to build a bona fida Web Service (using SOAP) or whether you just need a data transfer interface which can be built more easily without requiring all the shenanigans that SOAP requires in order to work properly (primarily a service definition which VFP has no easy way to generate effectively). If you don't have a strict environment that requires SOAP there are other easier options like a simple REST (Web interface) that can return structured but un-schema'd data

There are many ways to accomplish what you're looking for and there've been lots of good suggestions in this thread, however at some point you have to just pick a solution and go with it. Over analyzing and looking at the downsides is important but it shouldn't bring you to a dead stop.

Here are my two cents:

* If you have a simple service you need to create that requires only simple values (strings/numbers/bool/dates etc) then you can use the SOAP toolkit and the Wizards that come with Visual FoxPro. It's fairly easy to do this and you'll get a service set up in minutes.

* Likewise Web Connection's Web Service implementation is also very easy to set up and run with the added advantage that it's easy to debug services you create, but you still will have the same issue if you need to pass anything other than simple values since the problem is VFP's inability to effectively create a strongly typed service definition.


* If you need to build a more complex service then I would strongly advise NOT using FoxPro for the service creation or at least not raw FoxPro to provide the service front end. My personal choice here would be .NET but you can also look at Java or PHP and various other platforms. Using .NET gives the option of still interfacing with FoxPro via COM if you think you have to use Fox code to generate your data.

Keep in mind that any solution that requires FoxPro on the Web Server will require that you install the FoxPro runtimes on the server. For a small app that is to be hosted by an ISP (with a few exceptions) that's usually a problem as hosts do not allow permissions for COM interop nor have FoxPro installed on their servers typically.

If you are really stuck and you need help you can contact me directly from links on my web site for consulting.

Hope this helps,

+++ Rick ---