>I wanted to wait before I threw this one out since a few weeks back I heard a respectable MS Developer clearly say, "...COM & DCOM is dead". The content of the presentation was about XML. However, during a break I ask the speaker what exactly he meant by saying, "COM & DCOM is dead." Again, he comfirmed the fact that COM is a dead and compared it to DDE. He continued saying, "DDE is still available but no longer being used - that's where COM & DCOM is ." (I think I'm para-phrasing the last sentence)

This is not true. In the last DevDays, a lot of emphasis was on explaining that point, and show the interoperability between COM/DCOM with the .Net plattform.

Of course, once the entire .Net framework get delivered, many people would start building applications without COM components and would rely exclusively on .Net ones, but it would take a lot of time for a complex applications to be pure .Net, as many already done things would not be converted.

I expect COM/DCOM to be dominant for a few years (may be four or five), before .Net (or another) model take the prevalence.

Anyway, if you develop in VFP for the most part, you HAVE to stick with COM (at least for now).