>Hiya JimN ---
>
>>
>>Seems you may have a problem with the 'definition' of middle tier.
>>
>>Assuming a three tier application, middle tier would be the "BUSINESS RULES" tier, having only MARGINAL data access requirements.
>>
>>So just HOW does VFP's speed and flexibility help as a middle tier in a 3-tier application????
>>
>
>Hold on a sec, Jim. A middle-tier can broker business rules or facilitate data access. There's nothing that limits data access in a middle tier, on the contrary: A good n-tier application *always* handles data service requests between the front-end and the server database.

Agreed, but have damn practical question: could you imagine VB developer suggesting to use VFP as middle-tier extension of his VB front-end?