>It I understand correctly you now need two round trips to the server to get XML results and three trips for FTP. Would it be better to return a slightly more complex result to the initial call? If XML is OK then return the required XML; if FTP is required then return a different XML message containing the FTP path. Maybe use an attrib in the XML root to indicate the type. That would ensure the XML got there in one call, FTP would take two....

Yes and no, I have specific reasons to do it like that in order to isolate specific content for each method. Also, I might need to get only the status in order to do some custom layout with the VFP application based on the type of download, etc.