Here's a great link to an article on debugging COM servers:
http://www.theproblemsolver.nl/aspdevelopmentanddebugging/index.htmMaurice's latest version works on XP too...
>Hey all,
>
>I have the enviable position of maintaining my predecessor's imaging system (written in Foxpro). He decided to use COM objects for the GUI and business object portions of the system.
>
>I am becoming less and less enamored of this COM architecture each passing day. Here are the cons as I see them:
>
>- Hard to deploy. We keep having problems where the objects do not seem to be registered, even though we unreg and reg them every time the system starts.
>- Impossible to debug. OK, I really need help here. How can I put a SUSPEND in a COM object and step through code? My debugging ends up involving tons of messageboxes that I make pop up to diagnose what is going on (or wrong).
>- More syntax. This is nitpicky, but to enable a COM object, you have to build your objects a certain way to make them really effective.
>
>Here are the pros to COM:
>
>- Usable from other programming languages.
>- Nice, clear-cut functionality in a reusable package.
>
>The second COM pro can be easily attained from using a straight VFP executable with well-designed objects and/or procedure files, so the only pro as I see it is the ability for the COM objects to be used in other languages or in an ASP page, etc. Is there anything else?
>
>We are using VFP for everything we do except for out intranet (where we aren't using the COM objects yet anyway). Therefore, is there any advantage to using COM objects? The debugging is what really kills me. I can't figure out how to "see what the code sees" the way I can by stepping through a normal EXE while it is running live. Some of that may be the way the COM objects are designed, layers of objects so many layers deep that trying to run the system as pure VFP objects is impossible. Objects reference other objects via the COM-based syntax, so there is no way to run the thing as pure VFP code. Plus, there are still the deployment issues.
>
>The Fox team has made VFP executables so easy to use. Being able to create objects right out of an EXE or APP is wonderful, and provides all the same benefits as COM objects (when working with an all-VFP shop). So can anyone tell me why to go COM? Sorry this got so long and turned into a bit of a rant... *smile*
>
>Thanks,
>JoeK
