Simon,

>I am currently using Advantage ACE library and it works fine. Apollo still exists in fact they released a new version 7 last year http://www.vistasoftware.com.
>
>Unless I am misunderstanding something an FLL will not work for what I want. I have a Windows NT service written in Purebasic and I would like to use VFP from within that service so I want to go from Purebasic or 'C' to VFP not vice versa. My understanding is that an FLL runs in VFP but I will not be running a VFP application.
>

Either a COM hook or OLE Linking and Embedding from 16-bit days (working still in 64 bit I heard).
Pretty basic stuff - and having a vfp COM server hanging around is nearly nothing in todays memory.
Giving it its own process as exe solves nearly all worries of shutting down your Purebasic.
Marshalling should also be no problem, unless you want near real time, and then the question "Windoze at all?" is eminent.

regards

thomas