>I always had a monolithic WIN32 exe for my desktop applications and as a result unintercepted "phd fatal error" from time to time. For my new application I suddenly discovered a conflict with certain ActiveX which makes me reconsider this approach. If I place PHDBase in separate out-of-process automation server dedicated to search only does it make any difference to separate Win32 Exe in terms of treatment for this error? I found mentioning some problems with COM in the archive , but since I never used COM myself, it is not very clear what the problem was.

PHDBase has to be treated with care. First of all, I am not using it as part of my main COM Web application. Basically, I isolate it on a dedicated server in a dedicated application, simple EXE, that I call from XMLHTTP object. So, the main server receives a request to search into the COM Web application. It forwards the request by XMLHTTP to a secondary server. It allows 20 seconds. If within that 20 seconds, an unexepected situation happens, such as you describe, it won't affect the main production server as it will return a result back if the 20 seconds timeout is reached.

So, as the search server runs in a simple EXE, it puts it down to the lowest common denominator. I prefer that approach and it allows me to dedicate/isolate the search process into one entity.

Even if I put the 20 seconds timeout, I never had any problem as far as crashes go. The only time, a very rare, a timeout has been reached, is about a specific syntax that PHDBase would be extremely sensitive on. In such case, once the log created, I can easily adapt the code to take care of it next time, if it happens again.

This is why I started to investigate recently on a backup plan. First, because PHDBase is no longer supported since a few years. Secondly, because there is no guarantee that FLL will continue to work as is with the next version of VFP. And, to add more, it contains too much restrictions as far as syntax goes. So, with SQL Server, I was able to obtain response time as good as the actual setup and I'm not facing such restrictions.

So, we have a backup plan. If ever I decide to move, I'll be ready.