>The application is not especially data-intensive; it will be used to drive a robotic cutting system. The robotic control functions have already been developed as VB Com objects and ActiveX objects. I don't think (I haven't seen them yet) that the ActiveX objects are data-bound (I've had problems in the past with this).

OT: I just had a dream about this very issue a few days ago. I dreamt about a company dropping their proven dos based RPL code and going to a Windows based system to handle the RCS. The system GPF'd and the arm went crazy slicing everything in reach...

Back on topic. Have you checked with the writers of the software that created the OCX to find out their experience with non-vb systems interoperating with their code? Also check to see if their are multiple parameters being returned by the OCX, if so you could have quite a bit of problems in receiving them in VFP.