>Craig,
>
>>>ODBC is old technology and not suited for n-tier solutions.
>This is incorrect. ODBC is a mechanism for querying data from heterogenous databases. It is fine for multi-tier development and has been used for many years now for just that. Just ask VB developers that have been using ODBC Direct, RDO, JET and other wrappers for ODBC.
>

This brings up my original question then...in a physical n-tier environment, how do you get the data to the user services tier?

>As a matter of fact the mechanism that ADO uses to query VFP data is an
>OLE-DB-ODBC wrapper.
>

Yes, I understood that if an OLE-DB provider is not available for the data that ODBC is used.

>>>ADO uses OLE-DB.
>ADO is a wrapper for OLE-DB. OLE-DB is Microsoft's future database mechanism and is meant to replace ODBC.
>
>
>>>The nice thing is, that the interface to the data will always be the same, no >>matter what the back end data is. ODBC calls can vary depending on the back >>end data.
>This is sort of true and sort of not. ADO just like all lowest common denominator systems has its limits too. There are different levels of OLE-DB providers and ADO adapts its features to whatever provider it is using.
>
>>>I suggest you pay a visit to www.microsoft.com/data. You'll find lots of >>information on OLE-DB and ADO.
>I agree this is the BEST source of info.
>
>Thanks,
>Rod

I appreciate the clarification. I'm still trying to understand ADO.