>Hiya Rox!!
>
>I haven't read the article but lemme post some theory: If you are working with an n-tier application, business rules and data access belong in the business and data access tiers. What does this mean? It means that under no circumstances should external programs directly call your data....this has to be an IT imperative for your shop. It also means that you have to post your business tier as a server-side component so that other programs have access to it.
>

Hi John,
Thanks for the input with my rambling brain, you and BOb both share my same thoughts on all this. So let me re-phrase my question(s). Is there anyone with experience developing apps with business rules stored in table? The article didn't seem to show any downside to this approach, so I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Also, if I do put my validation into a table instead of the dbc, how can let users use a M$ Office tool for custom query and reporting tasks? Some sort of Automation Server?