Hi Jerry,

Thanks for replying.

>Go to the WestWind web site (Rich Stahl's) and download his WebConnect Demo package. Rick explains well the FoxISAPI and shows how to use it with some demos, then he demos his package, and the wc.dll server. Overall, a great package that integrates perfectly with VFP, since it is written in VFP. Compared with reinventing the wheel it will save you lots of time and money.

I've been checking WC 3.60, and I've been reading some stuff not only the VFP help files, but also Rick Strahl's "Internet Applications with Visual Foxpro 6.0" book. There I could find some explanation and examples about using FoxISAPI, that made me wonder and make those questions:

From the book (chapter 5):

"With FoxISAPI you use Visual FoxPro COM objects in direct response to links and forms in an HTML page. Because FoxISAPI provides a direct path to your FoxPro code, it allows you more flexibility and control over what you can do with your servers and the FoxPro code within them. FoxISAPI is also the fastest and most scalable mechanism available from Microsoft to run Fox code off your Web server at this time."
...
"Microsoft provides FoxISAPI as a "sample" application. This means it does not officially support this product and you won't be able to call tech support to get help. Don't let that scare you off, though—FoxISAPI provides a lot of power that makes it worth looking past this disclaimer. Microsoft provides FoxISAPI with full source code, including the C++ source files to the ISAPI DLL."
...
"The initial learning curve is worth it: FoxISAPI provides what Active Server Pages cannot provide very well, namely the ability to build truly scalable Web applications using native data access that can bypass ODBC altogether if desired. "
...
On the highest level, FoxISAPI:

o Is a server-side Web development tool.
o Offers a high-performance, direct interface to Visual FoxPro code and data.
o Is an Internet Server API (ISAPI).
o Uses COM for messaging.
o Includes a built-in COM pool manager.
o Creates HTML output from your Visual FoxPro code.
...
"All of these features add up to a quick and efficient engine that is very direct and wastes no time with high-level components. A request is directly routed to your FoxPro code, which can get to work processing business logic and creating HTML output to send back to the Web server."
...
FoxISAPI pros

o Provides a fast and efficient interface to the Web server.
o The internal FoxISAPI pool manager makes this tool the most scalable solution for Visual FoxPro code available from Microsoft.
o Flexible because it uses FoxPro code exclusively.
o Offers native data access and full access to the FoxPro language.
o Extensible with framework code that can provide sophisticated, high-level tools.

FoxISAPI cons

o Difficult first-time configuration.
o Servers can only be COM objects.
o Difficult to debug your applications due to the COM-only nature of servers.
o Unsupported by Microsoft. (not any more)

All the above made me think seriously about using FoxISAPI (even more knowing that Microsoft now supports it). I have the idea that Web Connection (I might be wrong!) implements its own ISAPI, in the case wc.dll, and comes along a lot of goods (classes, functions, procedures, utilities, samples, documentation etc) to easy development of web apps.

I thought that for the one beginning to learn (in this case myself), should be appropriate to start with a simpler environment (FoxISAPI) than Web Connection, even that it may be harder (less goods available, so more lines to code, but learning the fundamentals at each step) to develop with.

Pardom me for making all the above references to Rick Strahl's excellent book (hope there is nothing wrong in doing this), just wanted to highlight the points that called my attention toward FoxISAPI.

All advice about this subject will be highly appreciated!

Regards,

Fernando