You are both right, of course, about the client's expectations, but this is a very specific client. The client is an HTTP request from another web server. The VFP COM server resides on a remote server that is a workstation for a Novell network. The COM process accepts parameters, queries data from behind the firewall, and returns an XML string -- either data or an error message -- to the requesting process. So, your suggestion to return an "abbreviated" XML string as the second parameter should work very well. Thank you both for your input!