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>>There is a real need to continue to have s SINGLE product (VFP) which can meet the needs of thousands of small/medium businesses, with at most the concomitant deployment of DCOM but with nothing else being mandatory to keep afloat and to be able to grow.
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>Jim, this exists now. With a web-based application you can get all the good stuff with less support. The COM/DCOM component runs in either IIS or MTS or even ISAPI. VFP will not solve all the problems. We have users spread all over the world that need access to a centralized database. VFP alone can't solve that problem.

Jim mentioned "small/medium businesses." Most small/medium businesses do not have users spread all over the world. I am not adverse to using new technologies when they are applicable. But in a lot of cases, VFP alone does a great job. I think a lot of programmers want to incorporate new technologies just for the sake of using the latest, greatest. Well, the main objective in business is to make money (in a moral fashion). And if you spend a lot of money (time) developing using new and different tools all the time, you are in conflict with the main objective. As a developer, my main goal is to give the users a program that will make them most efficient. When we had a need to deploy a VFP OLE server, we made the DLL. But we didn't waste time learning the technology before we had a need to use it. I can spend my time in two ways: Learning a cool new tool/technology, or using that time to give the users a new tool or feature or enhance an existing feature. I spend my time doing both, but when a new idea for the system comes along that will make users more effiecient, that is the priority.

I think the need to do something in a different way is driven by the users' needs. I think sometimes we think it is the other way around.

Anyways, COM/DCOM is a good solution to a lot of problems.

Joe