Hi Ellen,

you've been getting some good advice, but keep it simple <s>...

It sounds like you really have something simple you need to interface with
a Web page, so focus on building the component (you may already have a class
for it) and getting it to work correctly in VFP first. Test the class in
VFP, the build the COM object and test it from VFP as well.

If you use ASP build it into a Multi-Use DLL when you build the project.
If you're running the component on another machine (not the one you built
on) then you'll have to register the component there using the regsvr32
utility.

It sounds like you won't even be doing data access for the key retrieval,
so using the component will be very easy as you don't have to worry about
data paths. Make sure you build a useful error method into your server
so that if something goes wrong you can catch it. If you do deal with
data keep in mind that your server runs out of hte SYSTEM path with the
resulting issues of getting at your data from there (including figuring out
the real start directory).

You might want to take a look at:

http://www.west-wind.com/articles.htm and look at the ASP Object article
there - there are a few tips on how to efficiently use VFP components with
ASP.

Finally, I suggest you avoid the DCOM stuff. For what you need to do
a Web application will be much more useful and user friendly - DCOM is
a bitch to configure properly with security if you have anonymous access -
I wouldn't recommend that route unless you really need it.

+++ Rick ---


>Hi Everyone -
>
>I currently have an inhouse VFP5 app that periodically requires the user to re-register the program. The app gives them (a random) Registration Number and they call me to get an Access key. I run a program (that I also wrote in VFP5) to generate the Key. We want to automate this process so that the user can log onto the intranet to retrieve their own key.
>
>What technologies should I be looking at?
>Would this be a good job for a VFP COM Server? (the key generator could be rewrittern in VFP6)
>ASP?, ADO? Yikes, the more I read, the more confused I get!!
>We use IE4 as our standard browser.
>
>Please point me in the right direction!
>Thanks!
> ~ellen