Hi,

I just started working on a project. The setup is as follows, ASP pages 

running on a IIS 4 web server, com components running on an application 

server in MTS and a SQL Server 7 database server sitting behind all this 

(ASP 2.0/MTS 2.0/VB6/SQL7). 

A firewall is sitting between the web server and the application server. 

We've encountered problems with the firewall and DCOM and have gotten 

around them (following MS knowledgebase articles). Also had problems with 

object creation in ASP (marshalling asp objects etc.) I'm not sure that 

we've used the optimal solution.



First question:

Can anyone tell me what the preferred/recommended architecture is in this 

situation? As I see it using DCOM through a firewall necessitates 

lessening the security of the firewall i.e. opening up ports. Can anyone 

explain the 'correct' procedure for using DCOM through a firewall? 

(articles/white papers/diagrams are welcome ;-)



Second question:

Which is more efficient in this situation, returning ADO recordsets, XML 

DOM object(document,node) or returning a string (xml, csv etc.)?



Yours hopefully,

Gar

P.S. Is there a design pattern that could be applied  to question one?