>2. Would DCOM be a better way? That will mean that the sever will have at least 20 instances of the COM object (10 workstations).

Probably. This sounds like a situation that would be well suited to a MTDLL running in MTS (or COM+). Compile the exe to a multi-threaded in-proc dll, and add it to an MTS package on the server.

You should make sure that the objects methods are stateless so that they can take advantage of MTS transactions. (Call the context object's SetComplete method). For more information on MTS and VFP, read Rick Strahl's article:

http://www.west-wind.com/presentations/mts/mts.htm