David,
An especially important area, IMO, is best practices for interop, web services, etc. which is why I was trying to get something in the basic docs about this. Yes, you can simply create a class with OLEPUBLIC and call it from asp.NET OR asp, but, if you don't use COMRETURNERROR and the session class you're asking for big problems. The lack of this info in the docs is why many developers create apps that they think just don't work well. Other areas I've never seen published are things like accessing VFP data across the network or SQL/MSDE from a web service or a web app and the way you can accomplish this with COM+.
Again, it's not the fact that bits and pieces of this info are out there somewhere, there's just no coherent central base for the info. I must say that I really dislike Ken's attitude on this subject and I think it's more motivated by an overall strategy regarding .NET. That's definitely his right as the Manager of the product, but, it sucks for VFP developers IMHO ...
>Claude,
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>>Good lord, have you ever done any of this stuff? I get the same questions on interop and web stuff over and over again here on the UT and these things have never been covered by the mags....
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>I've worked through the samples in the whitepapers and articles, and I'm working on a project right now that will use VFP COM with ASP.NET.
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>I'm pretty consistently here on the UT on a daily basis, although I don't always post messages daily. I cannot recall very many questions on COM Interop here, but if there are persistent problems that people are having in using it, I'd like to know so I could target information in that direction if and when we run Interop articles.
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>I see plenty of questions about web stuff here, and you and Rick (among others) seem to answer those very quickly, so I have not been posting in those threads as much as I once did.
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>Aside from general questions like, "how can I run my VFP form on the web," what questions are most often asked that do not have good answers available, in your opinion?
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>>...I guess you're too grounded in the desktop world. There are probably as many articles for vfp web that you could do as have been done for the desktop which have been covered ad nauseum ...
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>Actually, I have much more experience in Web applications in recent years than in desktop apps. Web development involving VFP is one very broad area that I do have on my list of topics to address in future issues.
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>NOTE: If you want to take this discussion private, we could perhaps hash out some possible topics for focused articles to go on the editor's wish list. (For example, I still want to know what kind of problems people are having with COM Interop.)