After ravicoder asked about ActiveVFP in thread184-1830634 I looked a bit into it.
This is not a full review of ActiveVFP, but what I found out is:
1. The GitHub repository is inactive, there was no action since 11 years ago.
2. The GitHub originated at CodePlex and when it was at CodePlex there were additional downloads like an installer and a Zip you could just unzip in a web folder to get a basic version going
3. ActiveVFP is based on a mechanism you could redo. Here's Claudes main idea
I) Make use of MTDLLs for multithreading, the VFP working horse of his ActiveVFP Server is a MTDLL or your MTDLL.
II) Make use of what's known today as COM+ within IIS, formerly named MTS (see from 1999). also see the history from MTS becoming COM+ described in III) have a basic .NET based web application that does nothing but instanciate a VFP COM Server that does the actual VFP execution.
AS said, I haven't looked deeply and didn't figure out necessary steps to get it going, but as said in the mentioned thread, it has a good and still active replacement with Web Connection, if Web Connection wasn't even existing before ActiveVFP. To be fair, when Clause Fox first released ActiveVFP it was a mature project he worked on for years already, that wasn't just a new project that tried to defeat WebConnection, it may have started quite early and in parallel with what Rick Strahl did, I fear you won't easily find out exactly. Also, to be fair, WebConnection is clearly better documented and has a broad set of features, it's just not free.
The idea point III) can be redone even more directly with the ISAPI feature of IIS. So just search FoxISAPI in the VFP help. ISAPI is still an available feature of IIS just like COM+ or DCOM is, but they are all declining technologies. Before considering FoxIsapi as a basis also read about ISAPI/SAPI vs CGI vs FastCGI in for example. Which speaks against ISAPI for stability reasons, but the final decision is on your optimism of providing an error free web solution.
All in all there's more that speaks for WebConnection.
And one final note: Before posting this I checked the old thread and the last post in it is pointing at the FoxServerSolution repository of which is not considered in this post, it may be another and free ActiveVFP replacement, at least somewhat, but I have not looked into that at all and thus won't make any jump to conclusions. Nevertheless the ability to do Fox within IIS always existed with FoxIsapi.dll and there even is FoxWeb, a Foxpro based web server included in VFP samples, which you'll also find when searching ISAPI in the help.
Chriss
This is not a full review of ActiveVFP, but what I found out is:
1. The GitHub repository is inactive, there was no action since 11 years ago.
2. The GitHub originated at CodePlex and when it was at CodePlex there were additional downloads like an installer and a Zip you could just unzip in a web folder to get a basic version going
3. ActiveVFP is based on a mechanism you could redo. Here's Claudes main idea
I) Make use of MTDLLs for multithreading, the VFP working horse of his ActiveVFP Server is a MTDLL or your MTDLL.
II) Make use of what's known today as COM+ within IIS, formerly named MTS (see from 1999). also see the history from MTS becoming COM+ described in III) have a basic .NET based web application that does nothing but instanciate a VFP COM Server that does the actual VFP execution.
AS said, I haven't looked deeply and didn't figure out necessary steps to get it going, but as said in the mentioned thread, it has a good and still active replacement with Web Connection, if Web Connection wasn't even existing before ActiveVFP. To be fair, when Clause Fox first released ActiveVFP it was a mature project he worked on for years already, that wasn't just a new project that tried to defeat WebConnection, it may have started quite early and in parallel with what Rick Strahl did, I fear you won't easily find out exactly. Also, to be fair, WebConnection is clearly better documented and has a broad set of features, it's just not free.
The idea point III) can be redone even more directly with the ISAPI feature of IIS. So just search FoxISAPI in the VFP help. ISAPI is still an available feature of IIS just like COM+ or DCOM is, but they are all declining technologies. Before considering FoxIsapi as a basis also read about ISAPI/SAPI vs CGI vs FastCGI in for example. Which speaks against ISAPI for stability reasons, but the final decision is on your optimism of providing an error free web solution.
All in all there's more that speaks for WebConnection.
And one final note: Before posting this I checked the old thread and the last post in it is pointing at the FoxServerSolution repository of which is not considered in this post, it may be another and free ActiveVFP replacement, at least somewhat, but I have not looked into that at all and thus won't make any jump to conclusions. Nevertheless the ability to do Fox within IIS always existed with FoxIsapi.dll and there even is FoxWeb, a Foxpro based web server included in VFP samples, which you'll also find when searching ISAPI in the help.
Chriss
