>Albert
>Thanks- In view of your comments, do you think it would be better to add VB as a second language in order to achieve multi threading and thin clients. Speed just becomes less of an issue IMHO
>regards
>john

Java has multithreading built into the language. VB does not do multithreading, DLLs created with it can be called from multiple threads without blocking. Java has an excellent object model, VB doesn't and probably won't. Java runs on almost anything with a cpu and good chunk of RAM, VB only works on Win32 and WinCE platforms. Java has many compiler and JVM vendors, VB has one. Java has RMI and CORBA to talk across the network or accross JVMs, VB has COM/DCOM (RMI is so much better than COM that Microsoft leaves it out of J++).

I would go with Java. Should you need faster performance for a block of code, write the block in C/C++ and use Java Native Interface (JNI - another part ot the Java standard that Microsoft butchered) to call it. I am working on a project where we use Java JNI <=> C++ DLL <==> VFP COM. J++ would make the COM interfacing a snap, but we require RMI.

If the project requires heavy use of COM, use C++ or VB. Otherwise, use Java.