Hiya John ---

>True. Then again, I don't think you are going to see MS push the concept of single or two-tier apps,

Oh, I totally agree. But the advantages of n-tier are only apparent at scales much larger than the average business. I think I read somewhere that 80%+ of American businesses employ less than 20 people and have a single place of business. We're never gonna sell n-tier at that level because it's overkill; akin to trying to sell Porsches to little old ladies trips to the market.

I have a somewhat complex VFP 5.0 app that services about 30-40 people in an organization with parent table sizes of -- ohhh --- 70,000 records. Since the application was installed in September last year, I have had to bill them for only *3* hours of technical support.

The app doesn't break, it doesn't bomb......

I guess what I'm saying is the preferred architecture for a given client is what works for the client and what is exposed by the busines and analysis models and use cases. MS marketing be damned, I am not going to sell a client a $100,000 n-tier VB+SQL Server application when a $30,000 single-tier or two-tier VFP application fits the business process.

OTOH, I'm not even going to attempt to interject VFP or VB into an n-tier 500 user situation unless specifically asked. There are much less hyped tools that work best under those circumstances.

Personally, I'm a VFP homer because it does the job for me in a variety of situations. I think it does get the short end of the stick in market share and marketing by it's vendor, but we all know that the job of a true professional consultant is to never ally oneself to one tool too closely. The right tool for the right job at the right time.