>>>>I'd like to use VFP 7.0 as a tool for examining instances of COM objects, i.e. ActiveX controls and OLE Automation objects, as easily as possible. My impression was that VFP7 makes it possible to directly inspect an instance of a complex object, like a WebBrowser control, simply by expanding a reference in a treeview-style Debugger Watch or Locals window. That's what I would like: to peruse the structure and properties of a live COM object in much the same way as native VFP objects.
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>>>My experience is that it varies a lot by server. With some, you can get to a lot fo info while others give you the same piecemeal approach as in VFP 6. That leads me to believe that it's something on the server side that makes the difference.
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>>>Tamar
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>>Hi Tamar,
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>>I guess I didn't understand you at first, but Mike Helland helped me see what I think you are saying. Have you noted the same VFP7 Debugger limitations that I observed with IE and the WebBrowser control? Is there another tool that you would recommend over VFP7 for examining the structure and properties of an instance of IE? Thanks very much for any assistance you can provide.
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>Absolutely - OleView, one of the tools that comes as a part of VIsual Studio, does a remarkably good job of exploring the OLE interface in detail from a COM systems standpoint - it publishes a ton of information, well beyond the simple programmer-provided description of a property or method; it allows you to explore the entire set of interface relationships of an object or COM server class in vast detail. If I want to know -exactly- what's happening with a COM object, OleVIew is the first tool out of the box.

Hi Ed,

At your suggestion, I took a quick look at OLEView. This seems to be a facility for exploring COM-related registry information in a much "friendlier" format than using the Registry Editor. I can see how it might be of general interest to masochists and C++ programmers, but I don't see how this provides any way of examining the values of properties in an instance of a COM object, as one can do with the VFP or VB debugger. Maybe I'm missing something in my basic understanding of OLEView; the absence of any accompanying Help file didn't make it any easier to figure that out.

When I say I'd like to peruse the "structure" of an instance of a COM object, I'm simply looking for a quick and easy way to drill down into member objects and see property values visible to my VFP programs. I am not inquiring about how to obtain detailed (and essentially static) class definitions and type library information. OLEView does provide an interesting glimpse of information that goes way beyond the level of the VFP Object Browser, though.

Thanks very much for the tip, Ed, even if it's way over my head and not quite what I'm looking for at the moment.

Mike