>>>An out-of-process server is an exe too, so it can be run just like a regular app. Your app might double as a user app and host to one or more COM servers. So, UI is unlimited, but its utility is questionable.
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>>I don't think so.
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>What are you disagreeing with? The questionable utility?
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>>Every standalone app I've built recently (ok that isn't too many since most are Web apps <s>) has an external COM interface exposed as an EXE. THIs is extremely handy and basically allows programmatic control to most of the application. Since everything's an object in the app a simple class factory lets you get control of almost everything including business objects in the app with just a few exposed method of the server.
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>Well, that's why I was careful not to say "useless". There are obviously lots of applications out there whose UI is exposed via COM (Office, IE, etc). I just wanted to express that my first guess was that this was not was the user was looking for, because really only special types of apps (those to be used by developers) are the ones where I have seen a utility for this. (and I am still open to be argument here).
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>I wanted to steer away from a well-intentioned bad design choice stemming from a misunderstanding of the real utility of COM. My post was maybe too vague and generally negative.
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>>For an idea what I'm talking about take a look at HTML Help Builder - it's a full COM object as an EXE which exposes it's internal project object as well as the UI via COM. There was almost no extra code to write to provide this functionality - it's all there and just exposed via COM.
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>I've seen it. Pretty cool.

Thanks Erik and Rick,

Just so you know...there is currently NO UI code in the server. I use a messenging object to send messages back to the client form for messaging purposes. The automation server never actually issues any UI code. If the messenger is passed as an object, then the server knows that it's from a VFP caller and messages are sent back via the messenger. Otherwise nothing is done but straight execution. I have no idea whether this is even an appropriate methodology so any futher input would be appreciated.

Steve