FoxPro, MySQL, ODBC, Local & Remote: Is VB right for the job?

I'm primarily a PHP / MySQL developer and I'm not up to speed on all of Microsoft's solutions, so I apologize if this is in the wrong place. If it is, can a moderator kindly move it to the proper board.

Here is the scenario:
My company develops a FoxPro based server application, which I'll refer to as AppFox. I do not do any programming on this application.

We also develop a PHP / MySQL based web application, which I am in charge of. I'll refer to this application as AppPHP.

There is a third party accounting application that we have no control of, which I'll refer to as App3rd. Now App3rd has an API interface via a server that accepts and responds with XML.

My boss would like both AppFox and AppPHP to interact with App3rd. In the case of AppFox, the scenario is relatively straight forward as both applications are installed on the same server.

AppPHP, however, lives on our web server and has no direct access to App3rd. So I'm contemplating an interface, call it AppX, that can be installed on the same system as App3rd and provide the bridge between the two. And as long as I'm going to be writing AppX to query data from the web server and put it into App3rd, I might as well set up AppX so that it can interact with AppFox as well.

So here are my questions:

1) Can VB connect to remote MySQL servers?

2) Does anyone know if VB can interact with a local FoxPro database, via ODBC or another mechanism?

3) Does VB provide a class or library for easily creating and reading XML documents?

4) Basically, does this sound like a task suitable for VB or is there a better approach?

I will be searching for these answers myself via Google, but if anyone feels like offering up their opinion or advice I'd appreciate it.

(edit) It looks like VB can do 1 through 3, but I'd still be curious about #4.

VB may be unnecessary for your architecture. It depends on whether or not App3rd is pushing data to MySQL and FoxPro or you need bi-directional communication between all of the entities in the mix.

If App3rd is simply pushing data, consider this. Both MySQL and FoxPro are ODBC compliant databases. You should be able to obtain Windows-based ODBC drivers for both of these databases. A FoxPro driver should be present now.

Once you have the drivers, you could search for an XML=>ODBC Bridge. If you installed such a bridge on Windows, App3rd could speak XML to the bridge and the bridge could translate to the ODBC API. That should eliminate the need for VB. I am not immediately aware of XML=>ODBC Bridges beyond my own company's provider. Our provider would require .NET frameworks on your windows machine and some minor modification of App3rd. You note that you have no control over App3rd, so you may want to search for providers that do not have such a requirement, if this idea appeals to you.

If you need bi-directional replication, please let me know.

Best regards,
Netrista Khatam
Technical Services Manager
OpenLink Product Support

As far as I can tell from the sketchy requirements my boss has thus far given me, I will need bi-directional communication.

To illustrate, let's say AppPHP and AppFox both handle a list of vendors. One of my goals might be to send the vendors from AppPHP to App3rd. In order to avoid duplicating information I will need to query App3rd for its existing list of vendors. As far as I can tell, App3rd's API requires that I also specify an ObjectID (integer) for each vendor that I insert, so I would also need to query App3rd's API for the next available integer.

Now pretend for a minute that AppFox isn't in the picture. I think I still need something that can be installed on the same machine as App3rd to talk to the remote MySQL server, where AppPHP will live. My company controls the MySQL server and App3rd is installed on our clients' servers, beyond our control. I think maintenance and support would be much easier if the only thing our clients have to do is install a small program on the same system as App3rd and make sure that it has proper access to the outside world.

So essentially I see this VB app pulling data from the remote MySQL server and shuffling it into an XML format for the API. Likewise the VB app will query App3rd via the API when necessary and update data on the MySQL server.

From a coding standpoint, as long as I'm going to go ahead and set up this app to communicate between AppPHP and App3rd, I might as well go the extra step have it communicate with AppFox as well. Otherwise the Fox programmer at my company will likely wind up duplicating a lot of the work that I am performing for AppPHP. At least this is my thinking.

Please let me know if there is any other information I can provide for you.