John et al,

Guess I should say something here...

I'm currently writing an article that demonstrates the use of COM with VFP on the desktop and SQL 7.0 on the server side of things. I've had the code running for some time now and, well, like you John, been busy busy busy. If I can get my current first priority outside-of-work project finished this weekend (ha!) or at least deliverable for testing round one, then I hope to dedicate some CPU cycles to the article.

It's pretty cool actually.. The desktop instantiates a COM object which instantiates a connection object to SQL 7.0 while running under MTS. Then the parameters passed from the desktop, having been passed to the middle tier object are forwarded on to SQL, which doe the 'stuff' (login & logout & tracking of same) plus some ongoing minor maintenance of the SQL tables.

My hope is to get people excited about COM and to see the potential in it. If that succeeds then we'll start seeing more real world examples and perhaps MSFT won't be so timid about taking an even more agressive public position vis a vis VFP.

Best,