Hi Terry,

>When a JavaScript file(under a web service) is opened in a URL

JavaScript is a language that requires an interpreter to be executed. Such an interpreter exists in three places:

- In almost every browser. JavaScript is executed in HTML pages that can either exist as local files or have been downloaded from a server.

- ASP supports the runat attribute of the script tag. That means, you can call JavaScript functions for example in a Response.Write line. ASP is the only product I'm aware of that supports JavaScript on the server side. Other products use Java which is an entirely different language.

- In the Windows Scripting Host. If it's not disabled, you can write JavaScript code in a js file and execute it from the command prompt by entering its name.

Since web services are not displayed in a browser and do not rely on the WSH, the only possibility for JavaScript and a web service to meet each other would be the ASP page that is called to execute the web service. Is that what you mean?

>>can it collect anything from the server before it presents to the client?

If you have the URL of the server and the JavaScript runs inside a browser, it can send additional requests to the server using JavaScript Remote SCripting (http://www.ashleyit.com/rs/main.htm).

>But it seems to access data from an APache DOM instance on the server, writes this data to a client-side file (like a cookie) before it presents the page.

Java (which is something different than JavaScript) is a full featured programming language that supports remote procedure call protocols and a lot of other features. However, aside from Java, the only other possibilites of executing real programs on the client side are ActiveX controls and Browser plugins.

Do you mean "Apache DOM" or "Apache COM"? "Apache DOM" is an XML parser. DOM in the context of Java Script refers to the document model of the browser, whereas Apache is a web server. COM would imply that Apache somehow is available as a COM server.

>I don't think I need to reference the COM - only the structure that results from the "instance" of the COM.

I don't think I understand what you mean here. But we're getting somewhere. :)