Sherry,

OK, so we are really at the conceptual and logical design part of this project, but have jumped ahead into some physical design issues to see what's feasible. Fair enough. Now let's see what is really practical. But first, a few more questions (please give as much detail as possible):

>What we are doing right now is we use using the UW SERVER to start the imaging application each time when a user requests to view a image file.

1) What is the UW SERVER?
2) How does a user request to view an image file? Do they have several files to choose from? What program do they use to make that choice?

>In my code, I will only execute the comamnd: Createobject() if the imaging is not running.

Can you have the user use your VFP program to choose a file to view? If so, your program can instantiate Imaging on startup and keep it active and waiting all the time.

>The reason I think I need to store the object information after it was created, so I can the system will know what object the program is referring to when I use img.open(filename). In this way, my program does not have to be runing in the back all the time. Is it the right logic?

When you assign an object reference to Imaging using ObjApp=CREATEOBJECT(... that object reference is only good inside of your VFP app that did the CREATEOBJECT. Storing that reference to a file for later use by another program will not work.

Someone else may have an API or WSH way to find out if Imaging is running, but I can't speak to whether that would actually help you at all.