>We would like to be able to implement instant messaging. Something that would function in both Novell 3.12 and NT. We don't want to use a looping process which is constantly checking for a file(s) in each users inbox, which probably will eat up a lot of CPU time. We would like to use something similar to what Strahl is doing with west-wind. Have a process running in the back ground. When the user is ready to send an instant message the message is deposited into that user's inbox and a message is sent to that process which tells the user they have a message or even pops up the message.

That is the same thing I am looking for...hope somebody have it done.

But I don't like to use MSQM; it needs SQL Server and is an additional layer to install.
For that I have an implementation of a form with 1 timer looking for files in a folder and another one seeking for new records in a table, both working quite well... But I agree, that is not what you are looking for. Neither I.

Now I'm working in an approach using DCOM and 'data objects'. Still is not what we want, but it can be enhanced.
The idea is to instantiate a COM server in a remote machine, that way I could have the functionality that I want running in, let’s say, the server in which the data resides (actually doing not to much).

Basically I had built an custom object 3 core methods, Cursor2DataObject, DataObject2Cursor and DataObjectFromSelect. It has 6 or 7 more auxiliary/internally used methods.
Cursor2DataObject creates a valid (that is what Rick S said in some paper) COM object using scatter name xxx ('data object' because is pure data) for each row and adds them to a previously created one (with contain 'collection' info, number of records, cursor name and that stuff) with addprop.fll. The end result is an object with a data object for each row in the cursor. Entire objects of those can be added to another one, even nesting them. That way it is possible to have an invoice with header data with an DO with ‘rows’ of detail and another DO with payment data in a VPF native object. A la ADO.

DataObject2Cursor does the opposite process.

DataObjectFromSelect executes a given select statement to a cursor and using Cursor2DataObject returns the data as a data object.

It works perfectly in my first test locally instantiated the custom object from a vcx.
I was excited, so I built a ... ok, to make the movie short, finally I hit the *&^*& 'c0000005' error after I built my COM server.
The COM server (still installed locally in the same machine) is receiving my select command string, executing it an returning the DO correctly. So the concept is working. Something is happening when I am converting the DO to cursor, in this case using an object instantiated from the VCX.
I will work on it a little bit more to see if I can go to the root of problem or workaround it. Sure I can use XML instead of the DOs, but I the latest have VFP data types already in place.
If you (or anybody in the UT) is interested in see what I have (and/or to criticize the whole idea, too) I am more than willing to share it.
Agustin