I started calling this web service from CF. It is a remote web service and the web services is built with ASP.NET. When the service returns it returns an object with methods and properties. Once I call the service from CF I set the resulting object to a cf variable.

Somehow I can access the methods within the returned value. Perhaps I'm missing something or this is just some really cool thing .NET can do. I thought that you could only return "simple" datatypes with web services. Such as arrays of strings, key value pairs, strings, numbers, etc.

Nope... welcome to .NET. Have a buncha fun... .NET is going to not just blow you away, but hopefully replace all the CF crap floating around.

Don't get me wrong, for slamming out some quick, memory hungry, slow and clunky app CF is great...

Josh.........I take it your not much of a fan of CF.........

I use .NET exclusively at my full-time job for Intranet applications. I sometimes want to put a bullet in my head because at times get frustrated, but that's most likely because I'm just not near as comfortable and knowledgeable with .NET as I am with ColdFusion.

We use .NET with Crystal Reports a lot. The permissions and configuration can sometimes be a little bit tricky, but once you get it up and running, it's definitely worth it.

Your right, though, .NET is extremely powerful and can do some amazing things. And I agree, for a rough, quick and clunky application, you can't beat CF.

Glad the humor was caught and shared

Most of the CF hungry apps are a result of the easy of use of CF, not the server clunkiness (well in MX anyway). Most users can pick up CF and create a really robust app with little programming know-how.

You'd be surprised how often I get asked to look at a customer code and how horrifying it can be when it turns out to be a popular web site. This is probably the same for .NET, since it has a steeper learning curve.

I'm hoping that .NET will be able to process a Metabase faster than vbs scripts. But knowing MS I'm not getting my hopes up. It would be really cool if you could actually write to the IIS XML config file, but MS warns not to do this. Well what was the point then.

It would be even cooler if you could use .NET objects without having to write a COM wrapper or Web Service. If MS really wanted cross platform compatibility they wouldn't have moved .NET so far away from COM.

Oh well I guess every lang/platform has it's issues.