>1. HTTPS requests send by a browser and received by Apache are sent to my VFP code.
>2. HTML pages generated by my VFP code are sent back to user browser.
>
>* Does Apache have a native method for invoke COM objects? *

Apache 2 has said to have support for ISAPI. However typing,

http://localhost/foxisapi.dll?foxweb.server.hello?fred
or

localhost/foxisapi.dll

causes error

APACHE caused an invalid page fault in
module FOXISAPI.DLL at 015f:10003b36.

So there is no native way.

Also, ASP.NET and AFP 3 use named pipes instead of ISAPI. So ISAPI solution seems to be dead.

>Let's assume, however, that the answer is "no, there is no obvious way to do this, Apache is xplatform through and through so we don't permit this directly."

Using PHP,Apache ASP, Perl or Java to call COM objects seems to be unnessecarily complicated.
I need to distribute my VFP Web Appl to a large number of sites with automatical installation.
My application setup installs Apache on windows with a pre-configured httpd.conf file. So I can use any version which I want with any modules required.
Apache and my VFP application are installed as windows services, started automatically on windows startup or on failure.

So the problem is interfacing Apache with windows service.
I'm currently using VFPCGI for this.
Before I start distributing my appl, I want to look for a better solutions
for communication between Apache and VFP appl services.

>Your VFP object can present a SOAP interface and actually be installed on a completely different application server, acting as a web service from there.
>In some cases, this is a good idea, while in other cases it is a needless performance hit and over-complicates what you're trying to do.

>You still haven't given me very much information about *your* background as a developer, so I don't know how deeply I'm going to get into this part without getting completely confusing <g>. If it turns out that you want to take this option, we can go into it further.

I'm a preffessional FoxPro Developer. I'm starting to developing a large
VFP application which generates html pages to number of customer sites, each having separate web servers.
I have complete control over server computers and some control over client computers: I require clients to use IE 5.5+ or Firebird 0.7

I have also some other
external web servers which retrieve information from my application.
In this case, I have a simple GET method interface like

myserver/GetStockStatus?Item=123&Stock=1&Mode=XML

The URL is the same as called from brower.
The only infference is Mode=XML parameter which causes my appl to return
a Content-Type=Text/XML data instead of usual Text/HTML html page.

Since it is impossible to call SOAP from IE 5.5+ or Firebird directly,
it seems that using SOAP does not have any benefits.