Vladimir,

We have probably read the same article on the MS site - by Robert Green I think mine was.

In any case, depending on what you want to do, I would say that OLE itself is generally "not ready yet for prime time"!

I know that Rick Strahl (sp?) would probably disagree with me, but he is one who is ready, willing and able to get into the bowels of the OS and multiple components to achieve what is needed.
I am referring to all of the "HYPE" about how simple and easy and quick it is to accomplish these things using straight-up OLE and VFP OLE Automation Server.

The recent (August) FoxPro Advisor mag had an article on OLE Automation, *BUT* that article was limited to making a VFP functionality available to some external application with very little effort.
That of course is decidedly *NOT* 3-tier application design/processing!

In simple terms the big problem I have come across is that, AS I READ THINGS, *ALL INVOKATIONS ARE SERIALIZED*. That is, any Client's request *MUST* completely finish before another Client's request will be processed. Who can say what this would mean to Client response on any reasonable number of terminals, even with only "average" I/O and processing requirements????
It also appears to be a limitation of VFP at least that arrays *cannot* be passed back and forth to/from an OLE Automation Server.

It is my conclusion that MS has some way to go before what they *IMPLY* as simple and easy actually is simple and easy and responsive enough to actually use.

As I said, thing seem to be possible using facilities OUTSIDE OF VFP ALONE, but sticking strictly to VFP and basic OLE functionality, it seems to be a dream at this time.

I have decided to wait until it can be done straightforwardly in VFP.

Cheers,
Jim N

h>Hi All!
>
>I would like to discuss about 3-tier model and about the best way to do
>this in VFP. I read the article on MS site about this, but think that
>making new OLE server every time for each new project not so good apporoach
>to RAD. Any thoughts and ideas are welcome ;)
>Personally, I think about creating my own class Tableobj that should have
>methods for read/write values in the field in general sense. Recently I
>found that the table buffering is a real trap for programmer and start this
>research to find the best way..
>
>Have a happy day
>Vladimir Shevchenko