Hi Rick,

> an STA style thread has a lot more overhead and requires state that can easily get corrupted.

What kind of "state" do you refer to here? Session state is managed in the process and can be accesed by STAs as easily as by MTAs. Apartments do have a state, but i haven't yet heard of any corruption.

> It frequently blocks as it must ensure that the COM object gets called the same thread it was created on for succesive calls.

Yes, ASP.NET blocks frequently on VFP COM calls.

I'm not sure, however, in which way ASP.NET has to ensure thread identity. A thread can either be STA or MTA. How object are called is managed by Windows itself, not by ASP.NET. Whether or not, successive calls end up on the same object, depends on how ASP.NET obtains a reference. I'm pretty certain that subsequent page requests are not routed to the same thread, just any thread that is available. During the execution of a page, I don't know. My guess is ASP.NET keeps a reference to the object for the duration of the request and hence would automatically call the same object on the same thread throughout the entire process.

In other words, blocking occurs, because ASP.NET has only a limit thread pool for STA objects each of which hosts different objects that might be in use by different requests.

>Use VFP *or* .NET. But both together is a transitional band-aid, not a good choice for strategic systems!

Whatever "strategic" is. <g> I agree, though, that picking either one is better than throwing too many tools at a single application. We probably would pick different tools, though. <g>

--
Christof