>>Hi Edwin ----
>>
>>Very good point. No, outstanding point.
>
>Thankyou very much.
>
>Ned
>
>>> I think there has been one change with n-tier development. It is not just the data that will outlive our application, but the business objects that live at the enterprise level. Thus, you can enforce business rules and even RI in business objects and force all access to occur via these objects. Using shared objects such as those that will be hosted on MSFT's MTS hides the details of data storage. Indeed, the business objects could outlive the data. Let's say that today we store the data in a relational database, and in ten years wish to change to a new object data base. If all access occurs throgh the business objects the clients are not affected by the choice of back-end storage. Seems like a rather nice payoff.
>>>

Do you believe in 10 years old business objects/data/application/whatever? The real life span for a business objects is 2-3 years at best, and even less when another developer jumps in :-).