>There are some real benefits doing this because now I can bind my form controls directly to the business object's "Field column" properties.

You could also get the XML from the web service method and bind your fields to that. Its not something in VFP at the moment, it its a far more reusable way of doing (you have to keep in mind that SOAP is a lanaguage independent protocol, so when you use SOAP in a non OO language, properties make no sense there either).

>The result is a fat client application that could be widely distributed over the internet or run locally on a lan - with very little adaptation. But the fact that I can't access the properties of the web server kills this.

I don't think that adding something for backwards compatiability would be considered as moving into a new dimension. :-)

Yes, its too bad that every class can't be recompiled as a web service, but now you know, if you create stateless components from now own, they can be used as a Web Service, a COM object, or a VFP class.