The settings in the tab Server define the launch parameters including the maximum memory usage (in bytes) per AFP instance and the total number. Subject to the hardware employed you may be able to tweak it for enhanced performance through these settings.

For the processing of AFP documents it is absolutely mandatory to specify valid file extensions. If a specific extension has not been specified, AFP will refuse to interpret the request. This constitutes an additional control mechanism for the Web server. If e.g. you want to dynamically build WAP pages with AFP, you need to specify the extension .WML. Failing to do so will produce error HTTP 404 (File not found).

These valid extensions apply solely to those extensions that may be used for and processed by the AFP. This is NOT necessarily the same as the scripting extension of the Web server. The AFP thus performs only one additional check.

The AFP engine is the AFP module that executes your code. Three different alternatives are available. The MTDLL engine is a multi-threaded AFP variant with a remarkably low memory requirement. On the other hand you can't use all FoxPro commands with it. In addition, you can't just remove the engine from the memory if it gets hung in a crash. Selecting the MTDLL engine will load AFP3Engine.DLL. Since MTDLL utilizes the VFP8T.DLL runtime library it is available in only one Visual FoxPro 8.0 variant.

The EXE versions of AFP are available both with the VFP 7 runtime library (AFP3.7.EXE) and the VFP 8 runtime library (AFP3.8.EXE). In contrast to the MTDLL engine the EXE versions do not require COM access. To execute the engine, start the EXE directly. The drawback of the EXE variant is that it requires double the memory. On the other hand, you can use all VFP functions and benefit from the added stability of the VFP runtime library.

Which AFP engine you want to use depends on your requirements. For compatibility considerations with existing AFP 2.4 and AFP 3.0 legacy applications the standard value for the AFP engine is the setting EXE7, i.e. the deployment of the engine's EXE version under the Visual FoxPro 7.0 runtime library. We recommend the deployment of a Visual FoxPro 8.0 variant.

If you wish to operate the AFP with the C24 plug-in activated, never use the MTDLL engine. The reason for this lies in the fact that the previous version 2.4 used commands that were invalid in the MTDLL mode. The CD command to change directories is an example of this problem.

You should inform the visitor through your own error notice (HTML file) in this file. You may embed any FoxPro expression here <<…>>. You should take advantage of this feature – a simple error message is always better than a terse HHTP (Internal Server Error) or, in the worst case, the Red Screen of Death.

"Show error message in browser" – this will (de-)activate the "Red Screen of Death" if there are parser or syntax errors in your AFP pages. Use this option with caution! For safety reasons you should activate this option in development systems only. The error messages generated by the system contain a wealth of information about your system including the source code. If you want to correct an error on the real server at short notice, you can activate this option temporarily with the following line:

Error.lShowError = .T.

This setting persists until you explicitly set it back to .F.