>>..., but it is not being developed for n-tier applications, ...
James,
Where did you get this information? VFP plays well with COM and DCOM, it can be used to distribute COM and DCOM classes for creation with any COM host. It has fairly seamless integration of remote views for client server data access along with supporting ado and rds.
There has even been arguments here aobut folks who are not happy that VFP si being "aimed" at the middle tier of n-tier application development.