>You can have UI on a VFP out-oif-process server (.EXE) - it simply can't interact with the client session. You coukd easily have a server with a monitor screen, or even a live application up and running, at the same time it published a COM interface as an out-of-process server
>
>Sorry, I'm being dense here...
>How would the COM component provide the visuals itself?
>I've worked more with DLLs and not EXEs, but when I've tried to have an EXE COM component show anything, it doesn't blow up, but I don't see anything.

Right. The UI is not a part of the COM interface; the .EXE itself, where instanced, has a UI, that some poor innocent critter could interact with when that .EXE had the UI focus. This is why it's bad to pop a MESSAGEBOX() in a method on a remote server - there's no one there to click on OK and let it proceed, so the method just plotzes waiting on someone to wander by and click... You can have UI elements in an out-of-process server, they do not interact with the COM client application, whether remote or local - the UI is the UI of the out-of-process server; it belongs to (duh) another process, perhaps (in the case of DCOM) running on another machine; maybe that's why it's called an out-of-process server?