I made this in VBScript:

	Set oVFP = CreateObject("VisualFoxpro.Runtime.7")
	oVFP.DoCmd("Open Database c:\cache.dbc Exclusive")
	oVFP.DoCmd("Pack Database")

And I got this error:
C:\wintemp\a.vbs(3, 2) Microsoft VBScript runtime error: Object required: 'oVFP'

Then I tried this in the VFP7 IDE:

	oVFP = CreateObject("VisualFoxpro.RunTime.7")

And I got this error:
OLE error code 0x80004002: No such interface supported


I ran COM Explorer and see that under DLL servers there is a ProgID of "VisualFoxPro.Runtime.7" and it points to c:\program files\common files\microsoft shared\vfp\vfp7r.dll, something is just not quite right. I like your idea of instancing the runtime, I just can't get it to work. :)