>>Actually, I think MTS is ready for prime time. Stateless objects can be challenging to work with, but they provide great benifits in scalability.
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>>Those challenges can be very expensive in terms of development time. It means designing an entirely new framework for MTS objects. Just when we got used to properties instead of variables MTS essentially robs us from using properties. A challenge indeed!
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>Well if you are used to properties MTS has somthing called the 'property data manager'. I do not know the details, I'm working on that right now. But it will give us properties and somewhat of a state within MTS if we realy need it.


I think MTS is a good thing for the environment it is in (distributed apps, which of course is where 80 % of all development is currently in).

Some of the issues might be that you can take an existing app, and set it up under MTS and even use properties and everything works because even though it doesn't have to, MTS is always using the same object for you calls, so you assume that is what you have. And then one day, something doesn't work but because it only happens under certain conditions it becomes really hard to figure out what those conditions are. (somebody else got your object and changed it before you got it back!)

I won't criticize MTS because it is stateless or, if it wasn't, because it wasn't. It's probably an excellent design. All these things do make what we do more complicated and I question how much is necessary for us to follow until we need to.

I don't think every app should be 3-tier just because 3-tier is the way to go. I'm not criticizing 3-tier!

I am redeveloping an application I built (or started) in Foxpro 1.02 in VFP. It will be compatible with DBF's and SQL Server. It will not be 3-tier. I thought about it, but then decided, I don't need the grief! It is being developed to market to small businesses (sales under $20M). The fat client will give me performance and manageable support that can be sold/marketed at a reasonable price. Now, I may use business objects (codebook model) that could be put in a middle tier but probably only for web interface.

I want to make money at this and the people who might buy the software will do so if they can make money with it and I don't think they will care if it is three tier or n-tier or not!