I'm developing a data transfer application using Visual Studio 6 that detects
the arrival of data files on a server, processes them and inserts the result
into an Oracle Database.
For this app, I've developed a COM component in C++ to detect the arrival of
certain files and queue them for processing, a file processing out-of-process
component in VB that uses msxml 4.0, and the main application to handle all
the components and provide a user-interface, also done in VB. There can be up
to 5 instances of the file-processing component running simultaneously, each in it's own process (the public class is single-use), each using a global copy of
freethreadedDOMDocument40 to temporarily store and process the files, which
are different for every file processor.
The storing of the resulting data is done in a different private sub, using
the global DOM document. A number of tests of the type "if
IsNull(IXMLDOMElement.getAttribute("Date")) Then..." are done initially to
ensure that no loss of global data occurs in the msxml objects between
function calls. The problem is that it DOES ocurr! Most of the time it works
fine, but ocasionally the attribute variable which should contain date
information is missing.
Sorry about the long post, but this is a weird one to describe, especially
because it pops up randomly.

Thanks in advance,
rdeckard