>This is a certification prep application where users will take the sample tests online, on an intranet or on cd. On the web it will involve logins, creditcard payment, password creation/distribution, users answering test questions, tracking scores, associated app where content authors can collaborate online to create the questions, amongst other things.
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>Initially we want to run it in a virtual hosting environment to see how popular it will be before investing in a dedicated server. Each of the 26 certification prep tests is only approx. 4 Meg of data. I have to find a VFP-friendly web hosting site and since this is my first VFP web app, must make sure I have them load all that needs to be loaded. I have just started reading your book. Can you point me in the direction of the areas to pay specific attention to in regards to a virtual environment where I won't have full control of the whole server? From my readings, I don't see that XML will be involved since it seems that will be most useful for fat clients, is that right? Do you run your site on VFP or SQL-Server? Can you give me the name of a good VFP site out there that would be helpful to look at?

XML didn't make it into the book because it was really a little before XML's time. The parsers where just coming out and tools that used it were barely coming into existance. I use XML for a lot of things, but you're right most important for distributed apps where data and only data is sent over the wire.

You're looking at sending HTML over the wire or building HTML UIs that can be used in several places and the key to that is to build your UI to generate mostly HTML for output.

A good example of an app that runs this way is the West Wind Message Reader. It uses a Web interface for browsers and desktop app for offline operation. Both use the same display interface with the input user interface specific to the applications. You might want to download Web Connection and install the reader just to get a feel and compare Web and desktop versions and see how each handles the environment.

On my site everything runs Fox code and tables. Sql Server runs mainly for demos. Main reason is that other than the Web store there's no critical data on the site and for the type of apps I'm running VFP data performance considerably faster than SQL server (like the message board - SQL Server sucks at embedded string searches).

There's good reasons to use SQL Server in Web apps, but my site is not one that needs it...