Hi John,

Here's the reaction of the less gifted developer in the street who has no other tools at his disposal than his bare VFP... :).

The question is how do you get there. The trouble with n-tier is that it requires rigorous system requirements and sharp design. And the fun with VFP in small businesses, where problems are not too complex but rules and procedures are not very well defined, is that by the time these two requirements are realised ... the application has already been developed, admittedly in a first version.

It is difficult in such an environment to even adapt to a methodology that goes in the right direction, and _eat_ (read feed your family) at the same time.

And this for 2 reasons:

1. The amount of work is substantial, when compared to the average project.

2. Before you are doing n-tier ... you are not doing n-tier, I mean, and I think you will agree, that n-tier only gives results when the full paradigm has been implemented, there's no such thing as half n-tier, or half oo solution.

Tough you'll say, well ... maybe not. What we need in these discussions is not so much a defense of n-tier, but paths to get there. In other words, if you are not yet n-tier

Where do you start?
How do you maintain projects that are in different levels of n-tier ness?
What are the pitfalls?
What not to do?
What should be the intermediary objectives and what results can be expected?

More of my 2 Euro cents.

Marc