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

I guess we need to explore just what 3 tier development really is.
3 Tier development is an architecture decision that divides up applications into UI, Business objects and Data.

3 tier is not COM which is the common misperception today. COM is an implementation detail.

You can return data from a middle tier a bunch of ways:

Return a recordset object from (RDO, ODBCDIRECT, JET, Etc.)
Return an array of information.
Return a collection of objects
Return properties on an object

Each of these methods would work just fine. You just need to write UI code that puts the objects in a UI usable structure.

For instance, we use VFP objects that return properties and cursors


Thanks,
Rod